Glory and Gore
by The Sophisticated Shut In
Summary: AU. Sequel to "Know Your Quarry". Leela and Fry struggle to heal after the Games, as tensions rise across Nixon's empire and plans laid long ago begin to bear fruit.
1. Chapter 1

**A / N: Like Beyonce, I've returned with a surprise new fic drop.**

 **Real talk though - I know, this is only a surprise because everyone gave up hope it was ever coming. I wish I had a fun story to explain what took so long (some of you know for a _fact_ I started this chapter during the summer) but all I can offer is: work, bills, blah. Life is inconvenient. If I could devote all my time to writing, I would. **

**For the newbies: this is a sequel. There's a fair amount of first chapter exposition, and the whole fic loosely follows the structure of the Hunger Games trilogy, but if you want to make life easier on yourself, you should go read Know Your Quarry.**

 **For the old faithfuls: Did someone say Bender? ;)  
**

* * *

The cryogenics building comes down on a sweltering July day. No-one is really surprised. The building has stood in the same spot for more than a millennium, after all, and it's been centuries since basic maintenance was carried out on the foundations. Cryogenics fell out of fashion years ago.

The worst thing about the building collapse is that the city halts traffic for a full day. New New Yorkers complain but eventually find alternate routes to work or take the day off entirely, because the collapse coincides with one of the hottest summers on record and nobody wants to be on the street unless they have to be. Temperatures soar past what the human body can comfortably stand, so entrepreneur Carol Smother offers her latest-model robots to help with the clean-up.

No-one ever considers that she might have hidden motives for doing so. No-one ever considers that the collapse might have been caused by explosives hidden in the foundations of the building and remote-detonated that morning. Why would they? To suspect Smother would be to suspect one of President Nixon's inner circle – maybe even Nixon himself. And what reason could Nixon possibly have for wanting to wipe out this building full of frozen sleepers? Some of them are from his own era. Some of them were famous politicians, sporting superstars, national heroes. The support of any one of them would boost Nixon's public image, should they decide to give it to him.

Assuming they ever wake up, of course, and assuming they like what Earth President Nixon has done to their planet.

President Nixon doesn't deal in uncertainties. The safest way to fight potential detractors, he has always felt, is to silence them before they speak. And so he calls a meeting with Carol Smother. The meeting isn't recorded. It's held in the dark, in the dead of night, and neither party says much out loud. But it ends with a nod from both sides, and a perfect understanding.

* * *

The sun is high in the sky. There is an ambulance parked at the curbside, and a lone EMT sits in the cab, chewing on a wad of gum. Sweat is soaking into the collar of her shirt. Every once in a while a robot lugs over a stiff, dust-encrusted corpse, or a bag of unidentified body parts. The EMT – Ruiz - hops out of the shade, briefly examines these findings, then shakes out another body bag. It's been like this all morning. One body after another, and no-one for company but those creepy walking talking trash cans Smothercorp sent over.

There is one approaching her now. The finish on it is a functional, fog hat gray. It can extend its arms a full twenty feet, and lift girders that would crush a man, but it's not a machine. There is something almost human in its baleful yellow eyes. It looks at her and Ruiz swears she sees resentment. These things aren't built to serve, like Smothercorp says. They're built to _be_.

And this one – she sits up straight, shielding her eyes from the glare of sunlight on glass.

Holy cow.

It's carrying a child.

* * *

The robot named Bender Rodriguez is knee-deep in rubble, bending girders to get at the cryo-pods trapped beneath them. He's humming to himself, because the work is boring and some human music is alright. Especially the kind with banjos.

His name isn't really Rodriguez. He was named Bender in accordance with his primary function, but when he got off the assembly line and spent some time around humans, he realized they all had _two_ names. So he stole one from a Latino movie star, and the first time a human laughed at it, he punched the guy and knocked out all his teeth. (They recalled him after that and spent a day reprogramming him so it wouldn't happen again. Now he can't hurt humans unless ordered to do so by someone in authority, and some days he gets so frustrated he swears he can feel the cogs grinding their teeth smooth inside him.)

Bender pries open a battered cryo-pod and watches the man inside begin to thaw.

 _Cryo-pod serial number ZGJ29359. X-Ray Mode: initiate jaw scan / access dental records - - - create pathway / identify – IDENTITY CONFIRMED. {Jack Charles Burlington. Age 42. Frozen 2056.}_

The man's eyelids begin to twitch. Bender ignores him.

 _CROSS-REFERENCE / alpha one - KILL LIST. Input: Burlington, J. C._

 _Directive: Dispose._

Bender snaps off a section of girder. The man blinks up at him, befuddled – but the girder is already whistling its way down. It impacts his skull and he stills immediately.

Some days Bender wonders about his programming. Some of the tasks Mom has programmed him for lately bend the definition of "bending". It's not as if he can violate a directive – they're embedded too deep in his code – but at heart he's a bending unit, and lately it feels like he's doing the work of a kill-bot. Not that he feels guilty or anything. Guilt is for chumps. But still. He's a _bending unit_.

He tugs out the next cryo-pod. This one is only half a pod, and it swings open at his touch. There's a pair of human legs in there, and a diamond-topped cane. Bender pockets the diamond, because his directives don't explicitly forbid looting, and it's not like Stumpy here will use it anyway.

The cane identifies Stumpy as a 23rd Century billionaire and Republican Party benefactor. He is one of the few people not scheduled to meet Mr Girder . . . but too bad for him, he didn't take his cryo-nap in a reinforced titanium pod.

The next pod is dented but intact. It hisses, steam-white nitrogen pouring into the summer air, and the door cranks open.

At first Bender thinks he got half a human again.

But it's not. It's a mini human, half the regular size and drowning in an oversized camo jacket. Its hair is orange and girlishly long, but the scan says male, so Bender guesses it's a male after all. He scans for dental records.

Nothing.

Maybe the kid couldn't afford a dentist.

Bender abandons this mode of identification and scans the code on the lid of the cryo-pod instead, to cross-reference with patient records.

Nothing.

At a loss, Bender does something he's never had any reason to do before – he runs the search again.

Nothing. Nada. For all intents and purposes, this kid doesn't exist.

He stares down at the boy, and fights a growing sense of unease. This isn't how it's supposed to go. There's a list, and the list tells him who to dispose of. If this kid isn't on the list, then . . . then . . . then _Bender_ has to decide what to do with him.

The thought makes him feel dizzy, like someone just unscrewed the top of his head.

The kid is starting to wake up. He rubs at his eyes, then blinks sleepily up at Bender. His jaw goes slack. His eyes go wide.

"Holy moly," he breathes. "You're a robot!"

Bender sighs, and begins the preprogrammed speech.

"I am a bending unit designated to this task by senior officials at Smothercorp Industries," he drones. "I was created for the betterment of humanity and am programmed not to harm you -"

In the current circumstances, the last part is a lie, but the kid isn't listening anyway. Rather than edging away and looking creeped-out (as most humans do) he's leaning forward, entranced.

"You're a real life robot!" And then he reaches out, opens Bender's chest compartment, and sticks his head inside. "There's not a person in here or anything!" he exclaims, impressed. "This is so cool!"

His voice bounces around inside Bender's chest. Bender grabs the kid by the scruff of his neck and hauls him out. It doesn't seem to bother the kid. He wriggles happily, feet kicking at empty air.

"I'm being threatened by a robot! This is so cool! What's a bending unit? What's a Smothercorp? Do you have a name? Like . . . _Galaxmatron_! Or – or -"

"My name is Bender, nerd," Bender interrupts. He gives the kid a little shake.

It just smiles at him.

"Bender," it says. "Cool! I'm Philip. Phil." When this gets no reply, Philip swings his feet idly and adds more. "I was named after a screwdriver. I'm ten. How'd you get to be a robot?"

Bender gives him another little shake.

"Shut up. I'm processing."

"Does that mean you're thinking?"

The kid is as irrepressible as a puppy.

Maybe Bender should put him in a sack and toss him in the river, the way humans do with unwanted puppies. Mom would almost certainly tell him to do that, if the kid has no strategic value. By now it's pretty obvious he doesn't, so why is Bender keeping him alive?

Maybe he's just sick of killing things. He's not a kill-bot, after all. And the human thinks he's cool. Humans never think he's cool. They never look at him with their faces all lit up like that.

Humans keep puppies around sometimes, don't they? What do they call it? Oh, yeah. Pets.

The kid is still yapping.

"Can you shoot lasers out of your eyes? I saw a robot once on TV that could shoot lasers out of its eyes. Where did you come from? Ooh! Ooh! Are you part of a top-secret project for the military? My dad says the Japanese are working on killer robots. He says we better watch out, because if they can make toilets talk there's nothing they _can't_ do." He stops talking suddenly and frowns. "I'm all dusty. Why am I all dusty?"

He tears his eyes away from Bender and looks around for the first time. He takes in the piles of rubble and twisted metal, the dust that coats everything around them. The hover-ambulance suspended next to the sidewalk and the clear perspex travel tubes snaking between skyscrapers, with humans zipping past inside them. The Bachelor Chow advertizing blimp bobbing above their heads, and the ice still rimed onto the rim of his open cryo-pod.

He looks dizzy. When Bender puts him down he topples over like a sunk skittle, and the robot has to prop him up again. His teeth are chattering.

"Where am I?"

"New New York."

"I don't get it." His gaze is caught by something on the ground, and the color drains from his face. "Um. B-Bender? Mr Robot? There's an arm over there. And – and it doesn't have a body."

He's right. Bender casually tosses the appendage into the nearest body bag.

"What do you know? Sharp eyes, kid."

This pet thing might work out after all.

The thought makes Bender feel strange, like something is tickling him from the inside. Like he can still feel the kid's voice echoing in his empty chest compartment. He's decided to let the kid live. He did that. All by himself, without any orders or programming. It's like having free will.

It _is_ free will.

When the kid starts swaying on his feet, Bender does something else he's never done before – he pulls out a bottle of liquor and hands it over.

The kid looks weak. He probably needs sustenance.

"Drink up, short stack," Bender advises. He examines the cryo-pod again. "No wonder you're scrawny. You've been on ice for a thousand years." He whistles.

Fry chokes. It's probably shock, but the coughing fit that follows – and the way his eyes are streaming – makes it hard to tell. Maybe it's the proof? Bender checks the label, but nope – Mom drinks this stuff all time, so it must be fine for humans. He passes the bottle back, shrugging. Must be shock.

The kid takes another obedient swallow, embarks on another coughing fit.

"This is the future? Bu – bu -"

"Welcome to the world of tomorrow, loser."

The kid's face crumples.

"I wanna go home. I want my mom."

"You have no home," Bender reminds him. "Your mom's been dead for a thousand years."

He's only pointing out the truth, but the kid flinches like he's been slapped. It's not like Bender cares or anything, but . . . crap. The kid's lower lip is wobbling dangerously now. Bender tips the bottle back toward his mouth.

"Don't worry," he says quickly. "You can come live with me. You don't need much space, right? I have a cardboard box I could fit you in. Maybe. Do you fold up any smaller than this?"

"Uh-huh . . ."

The alcohol is having a weird effect on Fry. It's loosened him out but it hasn't stopped him swaying. His eyes are out of focus and his tongue sounds like it's suddenly too thick for his mouth, so all his words come out slurred. He's also looking kinda green for a human . . .

"I c'n roll up like an armadillo," he says.

Then he cracks up, laughing so hard that . . . yeah, here comes the puke.

"I feel funny," he mumbles.

And he falls over.

* * *

Okay, so he shouldn't have given the kid alcohol.

But what Bender really ends up thinking, when it's all over, is that he shouldn't have brought the kid to that snotty EMT. Because that's when it all goes wrong.

She yells at him for giving Fry alcohol, and then she yells at him for telling the kid he's been frozen, and then she demands his serial number and threatens to report him to Mom. Bender yells back, but it doesn't do any good. Human trumps robot, it always does.

Bender is dragged away to be reprogrammed (again), and the last thing he sees is Ruiz putting a tube down his little human's throat. The kid convulses, still unconscious . . . and then the ambulance doors slam and the techs power Bender down for transit, and he's gone.

* * *

It's Farnsworth this time.

Last time they sent Bender to be reprogrammed, they had Wernstrom do it. Wernstrom is Mom's husband, and the father of her two snot-faced sons. He has sandy hair like Larry, but it's retreating fast into a widow's peak, and his rheumy green eyes water when he squints too hard. Bender doesn't like Wernstrom, though it's easy to see why Mom does. He shares her ruthlessness, her need for efficiency. He also shares her total lack of creativity, which is probably why she sleeps with Farnsworth on the side.

Farnsworth has a mind like a live wire. Ideas spark off in every direction, uncontrollable. Wernstrom is an improver – a builder on other people's prototypes – and Mom is an exploiter, but Farnsworth is the brains of the operation. Without him there wouldn't be any robots. But he's vague and easily distracted, and he has too many morals for Mom's taste. As far as Bender can tell, Mom can only tolerate Farnsworth in small doses, and Farnsworth can only live with himself if he breaks off their affair a minimum of three times a year. But they always go back to each other. Humans can be funny like that.

Farnsworth is alright, for a human. Mostly he only has eyes for Mom and assorted lengths of wire, but he has a scientific appreciation of robots. His pride in his creation isn't the same as Fry's wide-eyed sense of wonder, but it's better than the mistrust and indifference Bender gets from everyone else. And Farnsworth talks to him, even when he's literally tightening the screws in his head. Wernstrom and the other techs don't bother.

That's why it feels like a betrayal, when Mom drops in with her message from the Central Bureaucracy. When she tells Farnsworth they dug up an orphan at the cryogenics building, and Hubert is his only living relative.

It's his human – it's _Fry_ – and Bender sees it all unfold, the instant he hears this news. He can't help it, his system runs the projection too fast. Fry will come and live with Farnsworth, but Farnsworth will forget about him, order him out from under his feet . . . and Bender will adopt the little human, like a pet. Fry will be amazed at everything he does, and Bender will feel important again, the way he did when he was first made.

But the projection is derailed by Mom. She snaps that the boy would be a distraction, insists that Smothercorp is on the brink of greatness and she needs Hubert's full attention. Farnsworth protests weakly, but then Mom leans in and lowers her voice, adding emphasis on certain words. And Farnsworth does what he always does. He runs a hand through his graying red hair, fiddles with his glasses, shifts uncomfortably in his chair. His breathing becomes uneven and his eyes rake over Mom – the dark hair piled up on her head, the jumpsuit that clings to every curve, the sharp eyes that hold him in thrall.

And then he does what he always does.

He agrees.

* * *

Bender develops a strange glitch in the weeks that follow. Every time he sees Mom or Farnsworth, the pistons in his hand fire unexpectedly, metal fingers contracting into a fist, and he can't loosen them. He has to hide the fist instead, and pry the fingers apart with his other hand, long after the two humans have left the room.

Standard procedure is to report any glitches and submit for repairs, but it's not an order. It's never had to be, because what robot wants to walk around malfunctioning?

Bender uncurls another fist, weeks after he first noticed the problem, and wonders why he does.

* * *

A year passes.

Smothercorp expands and spawns hundreds of thousands of robots – robots with shiny, titanium alloy bodies and dull metal minds. They're not like Bender. They give him the creeps, actually. These new robots follow orders without question. They use their serial numbers instead of names and power down completely when the humans don't need them, and when they develop faults, they blithely submit themselves for repairs, and get broken down for parts.

Some days Bender wonders if he's living on borrowed time. He's outmoded and he knows it; he can't keep pace with the blank, soulless automaton that is now the robotic ideal. He's got too much personality to suppress. He steals little mementos on mission (unless expressly ordered not to), and he watches human telenovelas and swears in Spanish, and he can't be programmed for politeness, no matter how hard Mom's techs try. He doesn't belong in this brave new world of robots. It's only a matter of time before Mom has him melted down.

* * *

He's in New New York, sitting behind a falafel cart and watching the traffic. The cart is a cover – he's really here to spy on some senator in the bar across the street – but the humans around him don't know that, and they keep stopping to buy his inexpertly-assembled, undercooked falafels. Bender doesn't care. He's playing back the surveillance footage he caught earlier on his internal monitors, cleaning up the audio and sharpening the resolution so Mom can recreate every word and glance of the senator's covert conversation.

It's tedious work, even for a robot, and his attention has just started to wander when -

It's him. _It's his human_.

The little human is walking up the street with a whole bunch of other little humans, in varying sizes and degrees of weediness. Fry is last in line. He looks a lot like he did a year ago. A head taller, maybe, but just as scrawny. His orange hair is sticking up through a hole in his hat. The hat is green wool and shapeless, riddled with holes, but it's the warmest thing on the kid. It's January and the city is sunk in snow, but not one of these kids has a coat, Bender realizes. And humans are frail, so they're probably freezing. Fry is wearing a faded brown sweater, and a pair of blue jeans with a hole like an open tin can flapping at the knee. His canvas sneakers are soaked through with sludge, and he's shivering. There's some kind of green gunk running out of his nose, and he keeps wiping it on his sleeve.

Bender stares at him.

Every mechanism in his body has seized up. He can't move.

It's his human. It's really _him_.

Wild simulations run through his mind – he sees himself snatching the kid, running away, seeking out some backstreet hacker for reprogramming – but it's over before he can act on it. Fry moves past him, unseeing, and then another kid blocks him from view and the whole group is gone. They move away down the street and the stupid senator stays in his stupid bar, and Bender stays stuck behind his fake falafel cart – _unobtrusive, unnoticed, undercover_ – recording the man eating pork rinds. Because he can't do anything else.

* * *

He sees Fry twice more in the years that follow.

The first time Fry is maybe twelve (it's hard to tell with humans). His hair is getting long again, brushing his shoulders, and he looks skinnier than ever. It's summertime and he must've wandered away from the group or something, because he's standing among the tables in a street cafe. The rest of the kids are some way away, laughing as their leader – an adult female in a navy pantsuit as severe as her expression – berates his little meatbag. She's calling him a thief, and she slaps him hard enough to leave a stinging pink mark on his cheek. Then she drags him back to the group by his hair. He mumbles apologies and trudges away with his head down, but Bender is watching him in high resolution zoom, and when the woman turns away he sees Fry tuck a half-eaten bread roll into his pocket, and grin lightning fast.

The next time is winter, two or three years later. The sidewalks are glistening with black ice and the city is deserted, save for criminals and unwanted children, who come out like stray dogs, whatever the weather. Fry has cut his hair at last, but he's a lot taller now - enough to make Bender wonder how fast humans grow, exactly. He's still skinny though, his clothes flopping off him, and his cheeks are chafed with cold. He's with another two humans – a finnicky blonde boy with a high-pitched voice, and a girl with wavy yellow-brown hair and freckles, who keeps stealing his hat. The three of them have duct-taped the knives from an old dinner service to their shoes and they're skating in the street, laughing as they duck hover-cars and passers-by.

Fry is hungry and cold, but he looks happy. Bender has never seen a human who looked like he was having this much fun just being _alive_. And he knows humans who are rich and powerful and have sex all the time, which is basically everything humans aspire to. Fry is stealing people's leftover food. He doesn't even have real skates. And he keeps trying to get his hat back, even though Bender has seen _hobos_ with better hats.

Bender stays in the shadows, stuck in his obedient frozen body, but he stares at the intersection at the top of the street, long after Fry has skidded away.

* * *

Crap hits the fan not long after that. Mom's covert whisperings with Leo Wong are uncovered by Nixon, and the crackpot dictator takes action. Wong and his family are wiped out in a hovercar "accident". The factories building Mom's robot army are torched, and her mansion is blown sky-high. Wernstrom is the only fatality, but Mom and her sons are assumed dead. Farnsworth too. If Mom hadn't been screwing Farnsworth on board his prototype stealth ship at the time, they all would be.

The ship becomes a kind of prison. Cloaked 24/7, in permanent orbit around Earth, they float for months; the only survivors of Mom's former empire. Bender is one of only two robots to escape the purge. Dumb luck saves him too – he was supposed to be back on Earth, but Farnsworth finally noticed the glitch in his hand and ordered him to submit for tests. The only other surviving robot is a goody-two-shoes named Flexo, who was watching Mom's snot-nosed sons in the ship's rec room at the time.

The months that follow are weird. Losing her husband, her power, and her life's work doesn't make Mom as angry as Bender expected. Sure, she yells and stomps about, but her rage is just an impotent display. She's going through the motions, no fire behind it, like a tiger Bender once saw in a cage. The other humans are scared to approach her, but they're all as freaked out as Bender is about her lack of a plan.

Even belittling her sons doesn't amuse her the way it used to. She laughs just once in all those months – when Bender tells her she's getting fat. Her eyes bug out of her head and for a moment he thinks she's going to have him decommissioned. She starts laughing like crazy, so hard she nearly chokes on her cigarette. "Son of a bitch," she says. But then she waves him off. It occurs to Bender that there might be some benefits to being one of only two robots left in existence.

Eventually a baby appears, and even though 80 per cent of his features can be cross-referenced with Farnsworth's, Mom says he's Wernstrom's. Farnsworth either can't see it or doesn't care, because he accepts this version of reality without complaint. Maybe he just doesn't want to claim Igner. Bender wouldn't blame him – the kid bawls non-stop, and his eyes have pointed in two different directions ever since Bender dropped him that first week. (It wasn't his fault. The kid was a squirmer.) It falls to Flexo to look after baby Igner. Mom certainly doesn't care enough to.

It's the Games that fix her. Bender is bored enough to hijack a signal from the tv satellite one day, and Mom catches him. It's the second time he fears decommission, and the second time it doesn't happen. Because the Citizenship Games are on, and -

"That's the Wong girl," Mom hisses.

Amy Wong is some fat kid Mom met once at Leo Wong's ranch. She's his daughter. It looks like she survived the car wreck that killed her parents, and Nixon rewarded by forcing her into the Games. Bender is expecting her to snuff it by the end of day one, but she surprises them all by surviving. She plays the other tributes, she plays the human sponsors – even Mom has to admit her manipulation is masterful. And with every day Mom watches this girl outwit Nixon, she comes back to herself. As Amy becomes stronger, Mom becomes stronger. Her gaze becomes greedier, her insults become razor sharp – with every passing day she becomes more powerful, more _Mom_.

By the time Wong wins (ambushing her fellow tributes in their sleep and slitting their throats) Mom is back in action. She orders Bender to hijack the news channels too, and orders Farnsworth to get his weapons workshop up and running again. Bender rendez-vous with trusted contacts on the ground, sets up a covert network of spies on Mom's command, and sources sites on distant planets for Mom's future factories. She's starting again, rebuilding her empire from scratch. The old Mom is back, ruthless and vengeful, and prepared to steamroll over any objections.

When Farnsworth argues that his blueprints were lost when the factories burned down, Mom simply fixes him with a cold clear gaze, and tells him he has everything he needs to recreate his work.

"One working machine," she says, gesturing at Bender. "And one to take apart." She waves off-handedly at Flexo. "What more do you need?"

* * *

Bender develops a new glitch in the months after that. It happens when he's powered down. Then he replays the memory of this moment in his head, every detail exact – only this time Mom points at Flexo first and him second. This time dumb luck doesn't save him, and _he_ is the robot lying dissembled in Farnsworth's workshop. The human pries his components apart, squinting at him through those thick milk-bottle glasses, and as he works Bender feels himself breaking up, losing himself, becoming smaller and smaller until there's nothing left.

Then he powers on again and screams.

He tells no-one about this new glitch, and makes sure to mute himself when he powers down.

* * *

The next two years are spent planning and working. Mom's new killbots are ugly and crude. They're made from scavenged and stolen components, and the design is one Farnsworth rushed through, not a labor of love. But their numbers are growing, and as Nixon pushes the people of Earth further, so is support for Mom's revolution. Bender is busy again, ferrying messages and supplies into the heart of Nixon's territories, and killing when he's told to. Preparing for the day when Mom will set Nixon's empire on fire. It's coming soon, she says.

Soon.

Mom builds more robots and makes more plans, and time passes in the steady, monotonous way it does when Bender has nothing to hold his interest. He wishes the good stuff would start already – all that chaos and fire and revenge the humans keep promising. It sounds like fun. But it takes time for Mom to put all the pieces into place.

A year passes. Then two. Bender feels himself sliding into apathy, like he's stuck in a programming loop. It's the same day over and over again, and no-one pays him any attention, and he's _bored_.

And then it happens, and it's like being rebooted; like being electrocuted, like booting up for the first time the day he was made.

Maybe some version of this is what Mom felt, when she saw little Amy Wong on that screen two years ago and seemed to wake up again. Bender sees his human on a tiny TV screen, and it shocks him to the core.

The kid is a foot taller than he should be, and a lot cleaner than Bender remembers. Someone cut his hair, and he's all gussied up in fancy clothes. But it's _him_. It's definitely him, sitting on a plush leather couch and interviewing for the Citizenship Games. Exposing humanity's dirty little secrets.

His tiny human is in a televised death contest.

His tiny human is going to die.

Bender has no illusions about this. He nearly killed the little meatbag once with a strong drink. Fry won't win the Games. It's impossible.

It's _improbable_.

The thought worms its way into Bender's head somehow. Fry's odds are catastrophically low, sure. But what were the odds of some Brooklyn kid falling into a cryo-tube and going unnoticed for a thousand years? What were the odds of that same kid surviving the collapse of the cryogenics building? What were the odds of Bender seeing him three times in the years after that? What were the odds of him being related to Bender's own creator?

His little meatbag is _special_. (And not just because he thinks Bender is great.) If any human could overcome the odds, it's this one.

It has to be this one.

* * *

Bender watches this year's Games obsessively. It's easy to do, because Fry's disastrous interview got Mom's attention. She revels in anything that makes Nixon look foolish, and seems to think Fry's comments were some kind of tipping point, that his presence in the Games has the potential to destabilize Nixon's favorite propaganda machine. Or something. Bender doesn't pretend to understand how the humans think.

He only cares about one of them, after all.

Fry survives the first day of the Games because he's smart enough to flee the Cornucopia before the bloodshed really gets going. It's a good move, and it gives Bender hope. But then he teams up with some Omicronian kid who obviously wants to eat him, and doesn't even seem to notice he's being lined up as lunch. _Igner_ would have more self-preservation than that.

His human is not that smart, Bender realizes. And his priorities are all out of whack. He's in a fight to the death, but instead of evaluating the weaknesses of the other tributes or trying to get the jump on them, the way Bender would, he hides and wastes his CPU, dwelling on topics like Jrr's family, or that mutant girl who's freaking out a half-mile away. (Not that he knows that. As far as Bender can tell, he's never even talked to Mutant Girl. But he won't shut up about her.)

He's doomed, Bender thinks. _Doomed_.

And yet, improbably, he survives.

Bender watches, mystified, as mutts attack and Jrr not only fights them off, but passes up a perfectly good opportunity to chow down on Fry while the kid is knocked out and bleeding. He saves Fry, because Fry talked to him. Fry listened to him blather on about his hand-painted model of the solar system and his hardass dad, and Jrr repays him for that by saving his life. Like the two things are the same. Like he _owes_ him somehow.

It's confusing, but maybe the little meatbag is onto something. When he gets it in his head to go save Mutant Girl, Jrr doesn't even argue with him. Sure, he looks uneasy about it, but he still follows Fry and does everything he says. Even Mutant Girl isn't as weirded out by this alliance as she should be. Instead of snapping Fry's neck and stealing his supplies, she freezes up and lets him hug her. And then she says he has some kind of human infection, and tries to make him _better_.

Mutant Girl makes Bender uncomfortable. Part of him likes her, because she looks at Fry like he's crazy when he says something obviously crazy, and because she doesn't know how to react when he shows interest in her. She reminds Bender of a robot trying to figure out the human world. And she protects Fry, so there's that.

But there's something between her and Fry Bender doesn't understand. It's not the undercurrent that runs between them like electricity when they get too close – he's been around Mom and Farnsworth long enough to know what _that_ is. But with Fry and Mutant Girl, there's something else. When they talk, it's like there's an encrypted layer of code hidden under the surface. Something no-one else can crack. Bender watches and rewatches their conversations, and can't ever make any sense of them. Mutant Girl - Leela - looks at Fry the way Bender thinks of him. Like he's _her_ human. And Fry looks at her like he could look at her forever. (Bender gets bored if he looks at her for more than thirty seconds, so he can't see what the appeal is. He would suspect some kind of hypnotism, only it doesn't seem to affect anyone else. Just Fry.)

The mentor interviews don't make it any clearer. Doubledeal and the blonde human, Linda, speculate on what the truth of their relationship might be, and try to draw Amy into the debate, but she won't them give a straight answer - which Mom says is a sure sign this little love story wasn't in her playbook. It doesn't seem to matter if it's the real deal or a big sham though. The human audience is lapping it up either way. All it takes is some gooey talk in the firelight and one PG-13 kiss and suddenly love's young dream is all anyone at home cares about. Even Mom is taken aback by the popularity of their romance. Humans who can barely afford to eat are banding together to sponsor Fry and Leela. Rich kids are making videos of them set to sad music, and every bookie on every planet sees a surge in betting. They hit every demographic. Old, young, rich, poor, human, alien. Everyone loves them. Fry is the star at first – sweet, sensitive, and human, he ticks all the boxes – but Leela's popularity skyrockets when she shanks the Omicronian kid and then refuses to leave Fry's side, even though he's bleeding to death and she has a real shot at winning without him. Her suicidal loyalty wins her fans out the wazoo.

She's dumber than she looks if she thinks Fry'll live another day, but she really seems to believe it for a while there. Even when the little meatbag outright _tells_ her he's dying, she tries to argue. Bender likes that. She's not a quitter. She even says she wants him to win the Games. (If she dies, which Bender considers a reasonable caveat.)When they go to sleep, she holds on so tight she leaves marks on his skin. She's stubborn, but -

"I think I love you," Fry says, and the fight goes out of her. This – love, this thing that can't be proved or measured – is what brings her back to reality. Fry is going to die. She finally gets it.

It's a logical conclusion Bender reached hours before she did, but when he looks at her face, all angry and hopeless, he feels like he's realizing it all over again. He's not a kill-bot, but he thinks he could kill every human on Earth in that moment, if it would save Fry. And Leela would help.

If Leela was his creator, she'd give him the order.

* * *

They win.

They _both_ win.

It's not a possibility Bender ever considered. There is no precedent for a joint victory, and no time to stop Fry bleeding out. Leela is battered from her fight with Celgnar, but all the humans say her wounds aren't life-threatening. She's on the brink of victory, but she crawls back to Fry on her hands and knees and plays Nixon at his own game. Her crazy suicide gambit spooks the Gamemakers so badly they crown her and Fry without thinking. _Two_ victors.

Mom whoops the moment it happens.

"Gotcha, you bastard!" she cackles. "Ohohoho! You're going _down._ "

She pours herself a drink, still cackling.

"This is bad for Nixon, right?"

Bender doesn't often ask questions (it's not a good survival strategy) but this time he has to know.

Mom takes a drag of her cigarette, then exhales long and slow through her teeth.

"Wait and see," she says. "Just you wait and see."

* * *

It takes time for Bender to see what she means.

Fry and Leela spend two weeks recuperating under heavy guard in a hospital facility. Mom's spies report that Amy Wong stays by Fry's side the entire time, and posts another former tribute, Kif Kroker, to stand guard over Leela. It's clear she thinks Nixon might still try and off one of her tributes before they're presented to the world. But they pull through, the double victor thing a done deal, and it seems as if Fry and Leela got lucky. Nixon sends one of his goons to knock Amy around, but it's not the first time he's done that, and she's smart enough that she knows how to play the game by now. She dresses her tributes up like matching dolls and sings the story of their mad teenage love affair to anyone who'll listen, and for a while it seems like they might actually get away with it.

Only humans aren't dolls, and Fry and Leela keep playing their parts wrong. They're supposed to come together onscreen and cry or embrace or . . . something. Their reunion is supposed to be some sappy tender scene. A real Kodak moment. Even Bender knows that.

But Leela tears Fry's shirt half off the instant she sees him, looking for injuries like they're still in the arena. Like she doesn't trust that the fancy human hospital didn't mess with him somehow. Then the ditzy blonde interviewer suggests they kiss, and Leela glares daggers at her. Sure, she plasters on a fake smile and gives the people what they want, but not fast enough to hide her initial reaction. Oh, and she freaks out during the highlight reel - freezes up like she's having some kind of seizure 'til Fry brings her back.

Not that Fry plays it any smarter. He doesn't keep their kiss PG-13 enough for the audience, he's stupid enough to look sad when Jrr comes onscreen, and _then_ he makes history by passing out during his own highlight reel. It's a disaster.

For Nixon, of course. For Mom, it's sweet, sweet music.

Fry and Leela are all anyone can talk about, and everyone has a different take on what makes them so fascinating. Some believe the love story, some don't, but the end result is the same. Fry and Leela _inspire_ people. And that's dangerous.

On the buggalo ranches on Mars, Mom's spies report a rebellion in ferment. The people talk about the look on Leela's face when she walked away from Fry that first time. They say that look was hatred, and they say that hatred was directed at the Gamemakers. She wanted to burn Nixon to the ground. That's what they say. In whispers in dark rooms, they say they want the same thing.

In the poorer human communities on Earth, those same whispers have been whirling since Fry's interview. The faces of dissenters who were taken to Haley's Comet are printed on flyers, with the words "WORKED TO DEATH FOR SPEAKING OUT" and "THEY DIED FOR DEMOCRACY" scrawled under them.

Down in the sewers the first mutant Victor sparks hope in a community that had become passive and fearful. Graffiti depicting warrior mutants and idealized surface scenes appears everywhere, and a booming underground poetry industry takes root. Sewage overseers report record damage to pipes, and begin to suspect sabotage.

In Neptune three peacekeepers are beaten to death. The suspects refuse to talk when captured, but all four bear crude arrow brandings. The arrow, Mom's spies report, is a symbol of rebellion inspired by the poison darts Leela and Fry threatened to use on themselves in the arena.

On the rubber plantations of the Amphibios cluster, they murmur about the abhorrent cruelty of forcing a person to fight their smismar. The Amphibiosans are so invested in Fry and Leela's love story they don't even hold Fry's kill against him. Nixon was always considered a monster in the cluster, but now he acquires a new name among Amphibiosan elders. Loosely translated, it means "the man with no soul".

The same stories play out on every planet under Earthican control. An undercurrent of dissatisfaction is swelling beneath the surface, erupting like acne. Even Bender can identify the patterns. Subversive artworks, attacks on Peacekeepers, reported sabotage on works carried out for the benefit of Earth. It's starting, just like Mom said it would.

Rebellion. An uprising.

And in the center of it all, oblivious to the storm swirling above his head . . . his little meatbag.


	2. Chapter 2

Leela stares up at the pristine white plaster of her bedroom ceiling.

It's been three months, and she still can't relax in this new house, or think of it as really hers. She and Fry moved into houses of their own in the Victor's Village (a gated compound in upstate New New York, where all the Victors live) the morning after their final interview. The houses are huge – mansions compared to the shack Leela was raised in in the sewer – and have been furnished to the highest standard. The appliances are gleaming chrome, the furniture is all antique wood and silk-embroidered upholstery, and the floors are real oak and granite. Her new house is a palace, but Leela can't feel comfortable in it. It's artificial, someone else's idea of the perfect home. The walls in her bedroom are painted in shades of muted taupe and magnolia. When she moved in, there was a vase of dried flowers on her bedside table and a picture of a sepia kitten above the dresser. Leela threw both out immediately (that kitten gave her the creeps) but she had nothing to replace them with, so her room looks bare and unlived-in now.

They couldn't even return to the sewer after she won. Everything that once meant home to Leela is buried underground, with a past and a people she's not supposed to miss. She's a Victor now, and it would be suicidally ungrateful to think the spoils of her victory are inferior to that past in any way.

Sometimes - treacherously - she thinks it anyway.

Sometimes she thinks she'd give anything to walk down a street filled with lopsided, stinking people who don't look twice at her eye. Sometimes she wishes she could curl up in her old bed, or touch a hand to the door frame on which her father once marked her height. The sewer was ugly but it was a real place, and Leela felt like a real person when she lived there. In the arena she became someone else. She's been trying to shake that Leela ever since, but it's not working. She can't ground herself in this blank-slate place. There are no memories embedded in these walls. Even her mother is different here. She looks different in surface light, carries herself differently in this huge intimidating house. Her clothes, the smell of her . . . it's all new and unfamiliar, nothing of the old left for Leela to hang onto. And as hard as her mother tries, it's clear she finds this new world terrifying. She doesn't even go outside much because the sky makes her dizzy. After a lifetime in the sewer, it's overwhelming.

Not that Leela blames her. Some days she still wants to cover her face with a pillow and scream.

 _Breathe,_ she reminds herself. _In and out. Hold it. Slow._

This is a technique Kif taught her. It's supposed to be calming.

It isn't.

"Leela?"

Her heart jumps to her throat. The world becomes a blur of movement. There is a crashing sound, and someone screams -

Leela blinks.

She's sitting bolt upright on the mattress, breathing hard, and her arm is still raised in mid-air. Her bedside lamp is lying in pieces on the other side of the room, and her mother is cowering by the door frame.

"Mom?"

Munda raises two tentacled arms in surrender. She nods.

"It's me, sweetie. Only me."

"You startled me."

"I forgot to knock. You were so quiet . . . I didn't know you were in here."

Leela swallows. Her own mother is afraid of her.

"I'm sorry. I -" What can she say? _I don't know what happened? I didn't mean to throw that lamp at you?_ Both are true, but both make her sound utterly crazy. "I'm sorry," she mumbles again.

Munda edges slowly into the room.

"It's not your fault," she says. "I snuck up on you." She bends and begins to gather up the pieces of the lamp. "I don't think we can save the shade, but this base is only chipped. I think it's iron. Would you look at that? Such good quality, don't you think? Imagine, making leaves out of iron and turning it into a lamp! That's real craftsmanship. And so clever . . ."

 _It was heavy,_ Leela thinks. _And it was the first thing that came to hand._

"Mom." She interrupts her mother's rhapsodizing over the lamp. "Why were you looking for me?"

"Oh! I – you got mail, honey. I thought I should tell you."

Leela frowns.

"Where is it?"

"It's downstairs," her mother says hesitantly. "It was heavy. I think you should come and see."

* * *

It's a sack, stuffed to the brim with envelopes. It's wedged between the coffee table and the edge of the couch, the contents poised to spill onto the floor.

Leela stares.

"One of Mr Nixon's people dropped it off," her mother says. "I asked him to stay but he was in a hurry. He wouldn't even take his sunglasses off! Can you imagine that?"

"Yes," Leela murmurs.

Her mother is babbling, which means she's nervous again. She saw this man for five minutes, and picked up enough to feel fearful. That tells Leela all she needs to know.

The man in sunglasses was one of Nixon's goons. Leela has only ever seen them in the periphery, but she knows them by reputation. Nameless and taciturn, always in the same dark suits. They beat Amy once, for the 'crime' of staying with her tributes in the hospital. From the way she talked about the incident, it wasn't the first time.

And now one of them has hand-delivered this present from President Nixon.

Leela tugs an envelope out of the sack at random. If she's supposed to read these, she might as well get it over with.

The first letter comprises a single sentence, scrawled on dirty paper.

 _Go bak where u came from durty mutant!_

There is no return address.

"What does it say?" her mother asks anxiously.

Leela scrunches the paper into a ball, smaller and smaller, as if she can crush the words out of existence inside her fist.

"Nothing," she lies. "It wasn't for me."

How many letters are in this sack? A thousand? Two thousand? More?

How many hateful words?

And every one of them personally selected by President Nixon to torture her.

She picks three more at random and tears through them, looking for confirmation of her hunch. The contents don't disappoint.

The first is just the word "mUrDeRER", made out of newspaper clippings and surrounded by pictures of her face with the eye scribbled over. The second is from some guy with a mutant fetish, offering to "make a woman" out of her in graphic detail. The third is the worst. It's a page of poorly-spelled but meticulously-printed handwriting; describing how brave and inspiring Leela is, how Leela is the writer's favorite Victor ever, how her romance with Fry made the letter-writer believe in love. _"Wen I'm all growd up, I'm gunna entur the Games and win like u Leela,"_ the last sentence says. " _Luv Sally (age 9 and wun haff)."_

Nine and one half.

 _Nine and one half._

Leela's hands are shaking. She wants to be sick.

This is her existence now. Strangers sink their fingers into every inch of her life and pass judgement on it, and little kids sign up to die on the basis of her _bravery_ , her _love_ . . .

She doubles over, dry-heaving.

"Leela?" She is dimly aware of her mother's voice. "Leela, what's wrong?"

She shakes her head. When her mother reaches for the sack, to inspect a letter herself, Leela yanks it away.

"No."

"Leela -"

" _No."_

She drags the sack into the kitchen. Her body is moving on automatic again. It's not a plan, this thing in her head, but she moves with purpose and her eye casts about the room, looking for . . .

Matches. A bottle of wine. They're in her hands the moment she sees them.

"Leela!" her mother cries.

But she can't stop. The letters can't stay in the house a second longer. If she can't scrub them from her brain, she can at least destroy the physical copies - can send them up in smoke and stop herself ever reading any further.

She upends the bottle of wine over the sack and snaps the matchbook, dropping it on top of the sodden pile. The flames catch, bright and hungry, and lick their way towards the sky.

There is only room for one word in her brain.

 _Burn._

 _ **Burn.**_

The letters can't hurt her. Nixon can't win.

* * *

As she watches the fire burn itself out, Leela's breathing levels out again.

There is cold sweat drying on her forehead and underneath her clothes. Her hands and cheeks are covered in a thin film of soot. It's in her hair, on her skin. The smell of burning.

She breathes it in and she's back in the Arena, crouching amidst the flames as the Cornucopia buckles in the heat, as Celgnar screams from outside. She's burning, Fry's dying -

No. Fry's not dying.

Fry is the thought that pulls her back. Fry isn't dying anymore. He survived the arena. They both did. Fry lives in the house next to her, and while she's been burning her sack of letters . . .

Fry got one too. Of course he did.

Leela swears, her voice raspy from standing too near the fire. She kicks earth over the embers of her makeshift bonfire and takes off running.

Maybe he hasn't seen it yet.

Maybe his letters aren't as grotesque as hers. He's human, after all. Maybe whatever Nixon sent him wasn't so bad.

She takes his porch steps in one stride, landing hard on her heels. The door is shut, but it's not locked. Leela can hear muffled noise coming from inside the house.

Bracing herself for the assault on her senses, she pushes the door open.

The heat is on full blast. Every light is turned on, and every electrical device is blaring sound. The radio is playing rock music in the kitchen. There's a television on in the next room – 24 / 7 sports news, even though Fry has never watched a sport in all the time Leela's known him. There's an air purifier in the utility room (she's not even sure he knows what that _does_ ) and a roomba chugging up and down in the hallway. Leela battles her way through the aural storm, hands clamped over her ears, and turns them off one by one. When she can think straight again, she follows the last remaining sound to its source.

It's the stock music from Fry's games console, which is frozen on the main menu screen. A little green man is jumping up and down on a cartoon mushroom, which is emitting gold sparks. Fry isn't watching it.

He's sitting on the couch, staring at something cradled in his hand. His head is bowed, and he's very still. From this angle, Leela can't see his face.

"Hey, Leela," he says dully.

He doesn't even have to look up. He knows it's her. No-one else would let themselves in, or cut out the noise without griping about it first.

Fry's sack of letters is by the fireplace, hardly disturbed. It would be nice to be think he hasn't opened it yet. But he has. She can hear it in his voice.

It was a parcel, whatever he opened. Leela can see the contents laid out on the coffee table, though they don't make much sense to her. It looks like an array of papier-mache balls, painted different colors, crookedly suspended from a child's mobile.

Leela prods a reddish-brown ball with her fingertip. It bobs and spins on a thread, feather light.

"It's Mars." Fry's voice is raw and choked, his throat swollen with tears. "That one's Mars."

"The planet?"

Fry nods.

Leela reaches out as gently as she can and pries his fingers apart. He's holding a planet that came loose – a splotchy blue-and-green one so dented it looks like a moldy potato.

"It's Earth," he says.

"I don't -"

"Jrr made them."

 _Jrr._ The name hits Leela like a punch in the guts. Of course Nixon would send Fry this. Jrr was his friend.

And Leela killed him.

She remembers how it felt – the warm gush of blood over her hands, the resistance when she pushed the fleem into the back of his throat. How she really had to _push,_ throwing her whole weight behind the blade. How she didn't even stop to think.

Her hand jars, and the papier-mache Earth jumps out of Fry's palm and bounces onto the carpet. That's when he turns to look at her at last.

It's awful. His eyes are puffy and red, the kind of swollen that comes after hours of crying. He's still gasping and sniffing, making the little choking motions a person makes when they've cried out every drop of moisture in their body and still can't stop.

"He used to – he used to make solar systems," he says. "Model ones." He picks the tiny dented Earth up off the carpet and stares at it. "His dad hated it," he goes on dully. "He wanted him to go hunting instead, like a real Omicronian, and Jrr never would. They used to fight about it all the time. When Jrr ran away he left all his models behind. He thought his dad must've stomped on them all when he found out he was gone."

Leela frowns, watching Fry roll the miniature Earth between his forefinger and his thumb.

"If Jrr's dad hated these things so much, why would he send one to you?"

Fry shrugs.

"Was there a note?"

"No."

"Then who -"

"Maybe it was his mom. Jrr always said she loved him more. Maybe -" Fry hesitates. "Maybe she saved this when he was gone."

"And she sent it to you?"

Fry takes a shuddery breath.

"Maybe it was her way of thanking me. For - for being his friend."

His fingers close around the tiny Earth, holding it tight. He's welling up again.

Leela almost reaches out for him. She stops herself at the last moment and searches for something helpful to say instead.

"You couldn't have saved him," she says. "He was . . ." _Going to eat you_ , she thinks. "We were in the Games," she substitutes. "There was nothing you could do."

" _We_ were in the Games," Fry points out. "And you saved _me_."

Leela pulls back.

"That was different."

"How? How was it different?" Fry stares at her, wild-eyed. "I keep thinking – I keep thinking maybe it wasn't impossible. Maybe I could've saved him, if I'd been smart enough to figure out how. Maybe I could've . . . I _let_ him go out there, Leela! He went out alone, and he got caught in that trap, and I keep thinking if I'd stopped him, it wouldn't have happened. But I let him go. I wanted to be alone with you. I wanted -"

"You didn't kill him," Leela snaps. There is a strange anger bubbling up inside her. "I'm the one who stuck the fleem in his head, remember?"

Her callousness doesn't have the desired effect. Fry keeps arguing, obstinately blaming himself.

"You only did that because he tried to eat me!" he fires back. "Because I was bleeding everywhere! I was too slow, and I got hit, and then the blood . . . the blood . . . Jrr couldn't help it. It was all my fault."

Leela is grinding her teeth. With effort, she wills herself to stop.

"Fry," she says evenly. "You didn't kill Jrr. It wasn't your fault."

There is a long silence.

"I killed Keri," Fry says quietly.

Leela swallows. Keri was the name of the Amphisobian girl, something Leela only discovered a week after her death. They were in the Games together, they _fought_ . . . and Leela never even bothered to learn her name. Not until Fry killed her.

She dreams about it sometimes. The way Keri's smile froze on her face, the moment the blade burst through her heart. The way she fell forward as the knife slipped out. The tiny sound she made as her last breath caught in her throat.

And Fry, saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" as the life left her.

"You saved my life."

It's the only thing Leela can say. It sounds inadequate to her ears – _I made you a killer, I made you a monster like me_ – but amazingly, Fry heeds it.

"I'm not sorry for that," he says immediately. He looks down at his hands, twisting in his lap. "And I'm not mad you saved me from Jrr. But . . . they're dead. Because of us. Because of some dumb _game_ -"

Her hand flies out before Leela can stop it. To shush him, to stop him - to pull him into a kiss and shut him up that way if necessary. As if they're still in the arena.

But Fry catches her hand in mid-air and holds it there, his eyes boring into hers.

"You do that when you want me to stop what I'm thinking," he says slowly.

"Not thinking," Leela fires back. " _Saying._ "

She clamps her mouth shut again, appalled that she's said even this much.

There is a long pause.

Fry seems to realize he's still holding her hand in mid-air, and carefully lowers it back to the couch. He looks at their interlocked fingers, frowning.

"But you think it too." His tone is uncertain, testing her out. "You think the Games killed them. You think it's President Nixon's fault."

Leela looks at his expression. Open. Hesitant. He's poised on the brink of the same realization Leela had when he almost died in the Games. It would only take a word to tip him over. Maybe just a look. And then he'd understand everything.

She wants to agree with him. Nixon is evil. The Games are poison. There is so much she could say, so much part of her _wants_ to say, but . . . she can't. She _can't._ If she opens that can of worms with Fry, she won't ever be able to close it again. She'll see her words, her _thoughts_ , written on his face as they mentor the next Games, and she won't be able to play her part. It'll damn them both. If the thoughts in Fry's head become fully-formed, he won't be able to take them back – and he's a poor liar as it is. They won't survive another year if he thinks the way she does.

So Leela does the only thing she can do – shuts down this conversation before it moves into dangerous territory.

"I think we shouldn't be talking like this." She looks down at their clasped hands, and pulls herself together. "We survived," she says firmly. "It's over, Fry."

Fry's forehead wrinkles.

"So . . . what? We're supposed to forget?"

Leela shrugs. The truth is she has no idea where to go from here. She knew how to play the Games to survive, but there was no road map for what came after. So her imperative ever since has been the same as it was in the arena : survive, at any cost. Keep the people she cares about alive.

It's the only thing that matters.

She stands up, seizes Fry's sack of mail, and hauls it over to the fireplace.

"Help me with this," she orders.

Fry doesn't ask her why. Maybe he's still operating under the logic of the arena too, where Leela's decisions kept him alive and he trusted her implicitly. Whatever it is, he helps her thrust handfuls of letters into the grate, and watches as she sets them alight.

As the fire grows hotter he shivers and moves closer to it, holding out his hands to the heat. His cheeks look hollow in the firelight. Whatever weight the hospital managed to put back on him for the interviews melted off in the following weeks. He's bolt skinny again and his clothes are flopping off him.

"When did you last eat?" Leela asks.

"Um." Fry thinks about it. "I had cereal," he says at last, gesturing behind him.

There is a half a bowl of soggy Planet-O's balanced forlornly on the arm of the couch. The remaining milk in them is sour and yellow.

They've been there a day, at least.

Leela sighs.

"Stay there," she commands.

* * *

Fry's kitchen has the same layout as hers, but all his appliances are matte black. The tiles are black too, and all the counter tops are black marble. Leela hates this room. If her kitchen is too bland, in its shades of cream and duck-egg blue, Fry's looks like an alien mortuary. But there's food in it, so she overcomes her dislike and attacks the cupboards, looking for anything she recognizes as edible.

Most of it is a mystery to her. Tiny red grains. Buggalo larvae. Six different types of cheese. Her mother is slowly working her way through it all, Leela knows, but Munda isn't here, and Leela eats the meals put in front of her without even tasting them these days - let alone asking how they were cooked. Eventually she finds a packet of oatmeal under the sink. She adds water from the faucet, tips in some canned peaches, and heats it up on the stove. It's not much, but it's hot and it's sweet, and she cooked it, which almost guarantees Fry will eat it.

Sure enough, he eats obediently when she sets a bowl in front of him. He revives a little as he does.

By the time he's finished, he's recovered enough to feel self-conscious.

"I'll do the dishes," he says, jumping up as soon as he's scraped the bowl clean. "And I'll – I'll clean up in here."

He kicks an old sweater under the couch, his ears turning pink, and uses his sleeve to swipe a layer of dust off the TV screen. From his embarrassment, Leela guesses "clean up for visitors" was an edict the orphanarium drummed into him. She would tell him it's not necessary, but the place _is_ a sty, and this is the first action Fry has undertaken of his own initiative all day. It's probably good for him.

So Fry cleans up, and Leela burns the last of his letters. They're curling into ash when he returns.

"I should go," Leela says, straightening up.

"You don't have to." Fry reddens again. "I mean, you could stay."

He's changed his clothes. They're mismatched and they still don't fit, but they're a step up from the sweats he was wearing. His face is damp too – he must've splashed it with water to freshen up. And he smells like cologne all of a sudden.

"Uh . . ." Leela hesitates. She and Fry have been faking true love in front of the cameras for weeks, but when it's just the two of them, they're friends. That's what they agreed on. She's not sure she can handle anything more. "What would we do?" she asks warily.

"We could . . ." Fry casts his gaze about the room, searching for inspiration. "We could play video games," he suggests. "I could teach you."

Video games. Leela breathes a tiny sigh of relief. Video games are safe.

"Okay."

* * *

They spend the rest of the night racing tiny cartoon cars against each other on the TV screen. Fry wins every race - mostly because Leela's car keeps running off the road, or getting turned the wrong way round, or crashing into other cars and catching fire. Fry doesn't laugh – neither of them have laughed since the Games ended – but he bites his lip a lot, like he's trying not to smile. When Leela's car gets stuck in a patch of intractable mud, he takes pity on her and tows her free of it – then executes a perfect figure-eight flip above her stranded vehicle, just to show off. Leela rams him in revenge. Both their cars end up on fire in a ditch, but it's worth it for Fry's reaction. He yells "hey!", torn between indignant and impressed, and when he settles down again he flashes her a genuine smile.

They play until they're both yawning and heavy-limbed. Fry falls asleep on her sometime after midnight but Leela doesn't move. She just sits, watching her car wheels spin uselessly on the screen. Fry's breathing is deep and even. His cheek is stuck to her shoulder, and the hand holding his controller has slipped into her lap. He's drooling a little. Leela can't even pretend to care.

She hates that they live in separate houses. Her mother has hinted (heavily) that this distance is healthy, but the truth is that Leela would be happiest if Fry could sleep in a corner of her room. She'd sleep easier that way – if she could glance over at him every time she wakes and know in an instant that he's safe. It's a remnant of the arena and she knows she should be fighting it, but . . . it's hard.

At last, reluctantly, she eases free.

Fry doesn't wake, but Leela moves softly anyway. She pushes the front door shut, listens for the quiet click of the lock, then steps away -

 _"Finally."_

Amy's voice is sharp and reproachful in the dark. The porch light shows her sitting in the shadows, smoking a cigarette. She's wearing a snakeskin mini dress, slashed to the thigh, and stilettos.

She wolf-whistles, a smirk playing about her lips.

Leela stiffens.

"We were playing video games."

Amy's perfect smoke ring is marred by her sudden snort.

"Of course you were," she says. "God. You two."

"What are you doing out here?" Leela asks.

Amy usually restricts her visits to the daytime. She disappears in the evenings, wearing something tiny and glamorous, and isn't seen again until she tumbles out of a hover-limo in the early hours of the morning. Leela has never asked where she goes.

She's not sure she wants to know.

Amy examines her pointed crimson fingernails, looking bored.

"I was waiting for you," she says. "Spluh." Her gaze narrows. "I went by your house earlier. Your mom filled me in on your little bonfire." She wags a finger. "Not a smart move."

"What's it to you?"

"You want to make it out of this, don't you?"

"Obviously."

She's being rude, but it's late and Leela can feel her hackles rising. The last thing she needs is a lecture from Amy about how she's living her sham life all wrong. It's not like she doesn't already know.

The look her former mentor gives her could cut glass.

"Then play along," she snaps.

"With what?"

"Whatever the hell he wants!" Amy doesn't have to say his name for them both to know who she means. She takes a breath to compose herself. "He sends you creepy fan mail? Read it! Be creeped out! Cry and lock yourself in your room or whatever. Make it look like he's breaking you." She levels Leela with another look. "It's a move. You're being watched. C'mon, you know this stuff."

She's right. That's what's so galling about it. Leela _should_ know better. It's not like this was her first round at the Nixon torture rodeo. Her first response can't be defiance - or at least, it can't appear to be. Not if she wants to live much longer.

Amy doesn't wait for a response. She stands up, squashing the butt of her cigarette under her shoe.

When she turns to Leela, she looks tired. Her lipstick is faded, and her eyes are dull in the porch light.

"Play the game," she warns. "Just play the game, Leela."


	3. Chapter 3

Amy shows up on her doorstep the following evening, and her appearance immediately sets off alarm bells in Leela's head. She's not wearing the casual sweats she favors on her days off, or the tiny, overtly sexy outfits she wears when she disappears to parties. Today she's clad in black leather shorts and an oversized cashmere sweater. Her short hair is styled in feathery layers, and her eyes are shadowed in smokey black. The overall effect is somewhere on the borderline between sexy and sweet – a look Amy only ever reaches for on one occasion.

Standing behind her are two stylists: the girl with the blue bubble-cut curls, and a man with a quiff hairdo spray-painted gold. Their presence only serves to confirm Leela's suspicions.

"No," she says immediately. _"No._ "

"Yes," Amy corrects. "Date night, Leela."

Leela swallows.

This isn't the first time Amy has dragged her and Fry out on a very public "date night". It's happened four times since the Games ended, and each time has been worse than the last. Leela hates every second of it, from the moment the stylists arrive to paint a fake face on her, to the moment they step out of the car and into the wall of waiting photographers. The heat and crowds bring her right back to the Cornucopia in the Games, and the flashing lights traumatize Fry. They're both sick and shaking by the time the doors close behind them, but once they're inside whatever hip new eatery or nightclub Amy has brought them to, there's nowhere to hide. People stare, and Amy nudges them to perform – _hold hands, kiss now, laugh at my joke_ – so they sit on edge the whole night, afraid of slipping up the way they did in their interviews. The worst thing is that this is Amy doing them a favor, and Leela knows it. If she didn't put them on display for the paparazzi like this, they'd have to do more interviews, show up at more functions, appear in magazines and on TV. "Throwing out scraps to keep the beast at bay", that's what Kif calls it. And as much as she resents the intrusion, Leela doesn't disagree. She sees Amy disappear each night. She knows it could be a lot worse.

So she stands aside and lets the stylists in, lets them primp and preen and turn her into something gasp-worthy. She ends up with soft waves in her hair and a face smoothed free of any flaws – girlish and innocent, the way they always style her. Her dress is deep blue with silver threaded through it. It shimmers when she moves, and she suspects she'll sparkle in the dim light of the restaurant. Still, the neckline is lower than she's used to, and the hemline is higher. And she's wearing heels. She shoots Amy a quizzical look, but her mentor only shrugs.

"He reacts to it," is all she says, and Leela knows at once what she means. Fry, who can't act to save his life, was so intent on preserving their friendship last time they went out that he barely looked at her, or did anything more risqué than hold her hand and kiss her on the cheek. It had the effect of making him appear disinterested, and Amy had to run some damage control story about food poisoning the next day, in order to explain it away. They won't get away with that this time, so she's going to play dirty and make him stare. Leela has no illusions about her own beauty, but, well . . . Amy's not wrong. Fry _does_ react when she dresses like this. He gets this dazed, hypnotized look, and he openly stares at parts of her that make her mother pull her aside for a lecture the next day.

So she nods.

"Where are we going?" she asks.

"A bar in L.A," Amy says. "The _Splendor."_

"Splendor?" Leela echoes.

"As in, _Splendor of Earth,"_ Amy explains. She rolls her eyes. "It's owned by the son of one of Nixon's cronies. A real playboy, but he failed the eye test for the Army and he doesn't have the brains for politics, so daddy ponied up the dough for this little venture. It's the place to be on a Saturday night, they say. Or at least, it will be for the next two weeks, til everyone gets bored of it."

She reaches out and daubs deep pink lipstick onto Leela's mouth.

"Don't bite your lip so much," she warns. "You'll get it on your teeth."

"Right."

"And don't worry. I'll be there the whole time. Kif too. I got us a corner table, in a booth. It's pretty private, for once."

Leela nods. It's never private. It's never anything less than a waking nightmare, but she nods anyway, because there's nothing else she can do.

Amy squeezes her hand, then reaches into her purse and fishes out a small bottle of pills. She unscrews the top and holds them out to Leela.

"I need to stay sharp tonight," she says. "But if you want . . . it takes the edge off."

Leela shakes her head.

"No."

She's never taken a drug in her life, and she doesn't intend to start now. She can't handle that loss of control.

"It helps," Amy says. "It helps you get through it."

"No," Leela insists.

Her mentor sighs.

"If you say so. But just so you know . . . Fry took three."

* * *

Three of those little pills was three too many. Leela can see that the minute she lays her eye on Fry.

He's glassy-eyed and drunk looking, and his whole posture is loose. He's sprawled on his couch, staring up at the ceiling with a vaguely interested expression. Kif is watching him nervously.

"Time to go," Amy says brusquely. She kicks the couch, and Fry sits up.

"You can't make me," he mumbles.

Then he notices Leela, and . . . yep, here comes the dazed look. Like he's been hit by a mallet, but he's happy about it.

"I changed my mind," he says immediately. "I'll go. I'll go anywhere with you." He smiles up at her. "You're so beautiful. Do I tell you that? I should tell you that. I think it every time I see you. You're the most beautiful person I ever saw."

Leela feels heat rise in her cheeks. She has no idea how to counter that.

"You . . . you look nice too," she manages.

Which is true. He does. He's wearing navy pants to match her dress, and a smart gray shirt, and the tailoring is so sharp that for once he doesn't look like he's drowning in his own clothes. Leela could trace every inch of him with her eye – and finds herself doing so, until she makes herself stop.

"I'd follow you anywhere," Fry continues, in a dreamy tone. "But I don't think we should go anywhere. I think we should stay here, and make out."

Leela chokes, and coughs quickly to cover it up.

"We don't -" _do that anymore_ , she starts to remind him – but Amy kicks her swiftly in the shin and shoots her a _don't you dare make my job any harder_ look, and she shuts up. She takes a deep breath. "We can't stay here," she says. "We have to go out, Fry. On a date, remember?"

He groans.

"Come on," Leela coaxes.

She takes his hands and pulls him up. He sways alarmingly when she does so.

"You gave him too much," she snaps at Amy.

"Well, I can see that now," Amy says drily. "Just get him in the car. It'll wear off eventually."

* * *

It's dark in the back seat of the car, and Fry becomes fixated on the shimmering of her dress. His eyes roam the length of her body and he keeps laughing, putting out his hand to let it dance in empty air.

"You're sparkly," he tells her. "Like stars. I remember when we looked at stars. On the roof. Do you remember that?"

Leela nods.

"Of course. It was - "

Her breath catches.

Fry is tracing tiny patterns over the fabric of her dress. His movements are gentle and fascinated, and as his fingers ghost over her hip, Leela realizes it's not patterns he's outlining - it's constellations, as if Leela herself is a universe of stars.

That fluttering feeling starts in her stomach again. The one she felt when he first kissed her in the arena.

"Fry." It comes out sounding strangely hoarse. She tries again. _"Fry."_

He looks up at her. They flash past a street light and Leela gets a glimpse of his pupils, blown wide with the drug, or with . . . something else. There's a banked fire in his eyes, and Leela suddenly realizes that this was a very, _very_ bad idea. She has never thought of Fry as an inhibited person – but whatever Amy gave him, it's stripped away all his self-control, and apparently he had some after all. Because he's never looked at her like this before, with such blatant, burning _want._

He's slipped before. His eyes have wandered. He's been more enthusiastic than he should be, when they kissed. But nothing like this.

 _This . . ._ he'd burn and burn, and burn himself out, if she let him.

For her.

It's a strangely adult feeling, to have this kind of power over someone. Her mother would be horrified, Leela knows. Amy would probably laugh. Amy always seems amused by the fact that they aren't doing this already. She thinks Leela's reluctance is a sign of naivety.

Leela thinks the opposite.

In moments like this, she feels like she and Fry are skirting the edge of something terrifying. And whatever meager, illusory control she has over their situation, she knows it won't survive her letting go.

She stills his hand.

"Why did you take the pills?" she asks softly. She's not sure she wants to know, but it's the only thing she can think to say.

Fry blinks.

"The lights," he says at last. His voice is thick. "When the cameras go _pop pop pop_." He flashes his hand in imitation. "It makes the world go white. White light, everywhere." He settles, and turns solemn. "That's what I saw, at the end."

Leela goes rigid. She doesn't have to ask which "end" he means. It's the end of the Games, when his heart failed - before the doctors cracked him open and made it beat again.

When he died.

He relives it, then, every time they do this. No wonder he chose to get out of his mind tonight. Leela would too, if it had the same effect on her.

Amy is watching them, her eyes hard and bright in the dark. Beside her, Kif is so still he hardly seems to be breathing.

They all survived the Games, Leela thinks. They all have that horror in common. But only Fry died. Only Fry killed, and died, and saw what was waiting on the other side.

"What did you see?"

It's Kif who asks. His voice is quiet.

He killed a girl from his home planet, Leela remembers. Electrocuted her when they made it to the final two.

Fry stays silent. When Leela touches his hand he shivers.

"Nothing," he says dully. "There wasn't anything. Just light. And nothing."

"So no choirs of angels then," Amy notes. Her tone is brittle.

Fry shakes his head.

"No angels. No devils. Nothing," he says. "When you kill them, they don't go anywhere. They're just gone. And you did it." He stares down at his hands. "You did it."

In the silence, Kif swallows audibly.

"You shouldn't have drugged him," he murmurs to Amy.

Amy mutters something under her breath. It doesn't sound like English, but it _does_ sound like swearing. Whatever it is, it makes Kif touch her hand in silent apology. Leela doesn't miss the gesture, although she pretends to.

She knows better than to ask . . . but she does wonder, sometimes, about Kif and Amy.

* * *

The walk past the paparazzi is as harrowing as always. Amy smiles and waves – the look on her face disturbingly false – and Kif holds it together well. Leela's own smile is a rictus, and she grips Fry's hand so tightly he really should be in pain. But he doesn't seem to feel it, and Leela has to admit, he's not as much of a wreck as he usually is when the doors to _The Splendor Of Earth_ close behind him. He looks rattled, but not on the verge of vomiting. She supposes that's a good thing.

They push through the crowd, Amy throwing out smiles in all directions. She seems to know everyone here, and pretends to be delighted to see them. Once they order and escape to the relative privacy of the booth, however, her smile falls away like slime.

" _Parasites,"_ she hisses. Kif grimaces, and says nothing.

A discreet sweep of the booth reveals no bugs, to Leela's surprise. It must be too loud in here for them to pick up anything useful. Either way, she feels herself relax infinitesimally, knowing their conversation won't be recorded.

The food is probably good, but it all looks like fancy nothing to Leela. She picks at garnishes of black truffle and gold leaf, and tries to work out which parts are edible, and why such expensive food comes in such tiny portions. It doesn't help that no-one else is eating either. Fry's appetite is the first thing to go when he's nervous, and Amy is eschewing her food in favor of wine. Even Kif can't seem to bring himself to do more than push the food around his plate.

"It's not the food," he says, when he catches Leela watching him. He smiles thinly. "It's the company."

He gestures out over the crowd.

"Surface people," Leela says.

Kif laughs.

"Not to me," he reminds her. "But that's not a bad word for them. The surface of things is certainly all they care about."

"Hah." Amy takes another swig of her wine. "That's right. The great and the good. All facelifts and jewels and shiny, shiny surface. But I could tell you stories. I could make your hair curl. I could make you sick."

Leela frowns. She's never understood the surface, but these people don't seem dangerous. They just seem vapid, with their braying laughter and expensive clothes. They live in a shiny, uncomprehending bubble. It's hard to imagine any darkness lurks beneath their frozen faces.

"Amy's right."

Fry raises his head. His eyes have gone glassy again, and he's speaking in the same dull monotone he used in the car.

"She's right," he continues. "They're bad people. They used to come to the orphanarium sometimes. To look at us. Because they gave us money. They gave us money, so it was like they owned us."

Amy up-ends the last of the wine into her glass and drinks deeply, without stopping.

As if she knows what's coming next.

"They were better than us," Fry goes on. "Because they had fancy clothes and cars, and money. And money makes you friends in high places. That's what the warden said. But it didn't make them good people. Once a lady in a fur coat came. Mrs Astor." He frowns at the silverware. "And one of the little kids touched her coat. He was only a baby, he didn't _mean_ to. But she screamed that he was dirty, and she wouldn't shut up, so Warden Proctor put him in a bath in front of everyone and poured stuff on him. It wasn't for people. We were supposed to clean the floor with it, and it made his skin all prickly. He was bleeding, and he kept crying, but Mrs Astor just sniffed at him and said _That's better,_ and then she went back to her car. Like it didn't matter."

Kif puts down his fork, no longer even pretending to eat.

"That's awful," Leela says.

Fry shakes his head.

"That's not the worst," he tells her. "A man came last year. Before the Games. He had jewels in his cuff links and his face was all stretched, like . . . like he had pins holding it up behind his ears. And he had big square teeth. White teeth." He bares his own teeth in a phony grin, and shudders. "He took Colleen in the Warden's office," he mumbles. "When she came out she was crying. She had bruises on her. Here -" - he wraps his fingers, featherlight, around each of Leela's wrists, and then lets go - "and here."

This time he touches a point high on her thighs, above her knees. It's a light touch, his fingertips barely brushing the skin, but heat surges through her all the same. Heat . . . and nausea, as she realizes what Fry is saying.

"I never knew you could hurt a girl like that," he says distantly. "I never hurt a girl like that."

He moves his hands away and Leela shifts uncomfortably. There is a hot, insistent pulse thrumming between her legs, and she has a horrible feeling it shows on her face. Amy doesn't seem to notice. She's staring into the depths of her empty wine glass, like she wants to drown in it. Fry is lost in his own memories, and Leela doesn't think he can see his surroundings clearly at all. Kif has focused his gaze on a painting of the Nixon Monument, just behind Fry's head. It's hard to tell what he's thinking.

"What happened to the girl?" he asks.

"Nothing." Fry toys with his fork, pressing the pad of his thumb into the tines hard enough to leave a mark. He doesn't seem to feel it. "Everyone pretended it didn't happen," he says. "Even Colleen. When I told Warden Vogel he said I didn't see what I thought I saw. But I think I did, because Warden Proctor locked me in the sick room for a week after that. She said I had a fever that made me tell lies, and she wouldn't let me eat anything until my mind was clear. But I didn't feel hot. And my mind didn't get any clearer. Just foggier." He frowns. "After a week I was so hungry I couldn't remember why she put me there in the first place, so Warden Vogel made her let me go."

Amy's chair falls back with a sudden screech. She stands up.

"See, _this_? This is why we don't let you talk." She touches a hand to her temple. "I need more wine. Leela, get him some air."

* * *

They find themselves in the alley out back, by the trash cans. A lifetime in the sewer has left Leela immune to the odor, so the air smells pretty fresh to her. And it seems to revive Fry a little. He's not staring into space anymore, anyway.

He leans against the brickwork, watching her.

"I didn't know," Leela says at last. "The orphanarium. I didn't know it was that bad."

Fry closes his eyes and puts his head back. He seems dizzy.

"I bet the sewer was worse."

Leela frowns.

"They let us starve," she admits. "And they let us die when we were sick."

At the time, it had seemed inhumane. But there had been an honesty in it. The Peacekeepers spat at her and called her genetic scum, but Leela had never expected anything else from them. It had never occurred to her that humanity's visceral disgust for mutants might have protected her from something even worse. It had never occurred to her that humans could be just as vicious to their own.

Fry and Amy have forced her to revise that opinion.

"Let's talk about something else," she says.

This doesn't feel like a safe topic, even if the alleyway isn't bugged.

"I hate this," Fry says morosely. "Lying. Pretending."

"I know." Leela stares up at the cloudy night sky. "It'll be worse on the Tour."

The Victory Tour is something neither of them want to think about, but neither of them can avoid. It's standard protocol. The winner of the Games is always paraded through every planet on Nixon's empire, as an example of the might and magnanimity of Earth. It's a powerful propaganda tool.

And it starts in the new year, a month from now.

Fry nods.

"It'll be like this," he says. "Every night. For _months_."

Leela can't think of anything comforting to say. Comfort was never really her area. She lays a hand on his forearm instead, and squeezes in a way she hopes is reassuring.

Fry shuts his eyes again, leaning back against the wall. He sighs.

They stand together without speaking, until the dizziness passes and Fry can open his eyes again. It's a long wait, but when he does, his pupils are smaller and his expression is clearer. The drug is wearing off.

The relief must show on Leela's face, because Fry frowns at her.

"I don't think I should take those pills again," he says. "You look freaked."

His forehead creases as he plays the evening back in his mind.

"I made Amy mad," he manages at last. "Didn't I?"

Leela sighs.

"She was mad already. But you didn't help."

"And . . ." Fry stops short, horror dawning. "Um." He looks Leela up and down, his cheeks blazing as bright as his hair. "I don't remember, but, um . . . I think maybe you should be mad too."

Leela doesn't know exactly what he's remembering now, but from the look on his face, it has to be one of the times when he touched her.

"I - wasn't." The words are out of her mouth before she can stop them. "I wasn't mad. I wasn't . . . I didn't . . ."

 _I liked it. I didn't want you to stop._

Leela resolutely bites back those words. That's too much, too dangerous . . . But there's a part of her that has no desire for self-preservation at all, and it keeps wresting control of her mouth.

"I didn't mind," she hears herself say.

Her voice has gone hoarse again, like it did in the car. That's trouble. It's a bad, bad sign.

And her traitorous mouth is still talking.

"I minded that we weren't alone," she hears herself say. Quiet, but sure.

Fry blinks.

He's only two steps in front of her. Her hand is still resting on his arm.

Leela doesn't move it.

She doesn't stop him either, when he puts a tentative hand on her hip. His touch runs through her like a current, short-circuiting all but this treacherous, _wanting_ part of her brain. Fry doesn't pull her, but Leela falls into the space between them anyway and she knows she must have stepped forward. And then his mouth is on hers and she doesn't know which of them to blame but she doesn't much care.

This isn't the way they're supposed to kiss. It's open-mouthed and needy. Her fists are balled in the front of his shirt and then Fry is breathing hard and fast against her neck, his breath warm on her throat, and Leela doesn't know where it came from, this explosion of need – but it doesn't exist to please anyone but them, and so she pushes closer, twists her fingers in his hair and shifts her hips to hold him in place. Fry groans and sucks hard on her neck, his teeth grazing the skin. That draws another unfamiliar sound from her mouth - a shivery "oh- _ohh_ " - and Fry gasps, overloaded. He pushes her away suddenly, wrenching them apart.

"We – we should – stop," he pants.

Leela reddens. Mutant anatomy shares some basic similarities with human. And Fry is very, very human. It's immediately obvious what will happen if they _don't_ stop.

She nods, breathing deep. Her lips are swollen and there's a hot pulse throbbing under the mark on her neck. She rearranges her hair as best she can to cover it, and wipes off her smudged lipstick with the back of her hand. The sparkle has rubbed off whole tracts of her dress, but there's nothing she can do about that except pray no-one notices.

Fry takes a lot longer to recover.

"We should go back inside," Leela says when he's stopped reciting the names of long-dead presidents and can look her in the eye again. "They're waiting for us."

"Right. Right. Wait!" Fry catches her wrist as she turns to leave. "Leela." He stares at her, as if he doesn't know what he even wants to ask. "Why?" he says at last.

It's one word, but it contains everything. _Why now? Why here? Why me?_

Leela swallows.

 _Because you don't belong to Nixon,_ she thinks. _Because whatever the Gamemakers made us do, they didn't make us do that._

It matters. It matters to have something Nixon can't touch, something the Gamemakers can't control.

"Because," she admits. "I hate it too. Pretending. _Lying._ I wanted something . . . real. And I wanted - I wanted it with you."

It doesn't feel like enough, but it's the only answer Leela can give - the only form she can put to the storm inside her head.

And it must be enough for Fry, because he nods, slowly, and takes her hand.

"Okay," he says. Just _"okay",_ without pushing her to further unravel that spool of thought.

"Okay," Leela echoes, and for the first time in months - just for a moment - she almost feels it.


	4. Chapter 4

There's someone watching her.

This isn't a thought. Not on a conscious level. It's something Leela just _feels_. The hair rises on the back of her neck and her sleep cycle stutters and -

 _Danger,_ her body screams at her. She's halfway up and out of bed before it even registers, adrenaline searing through her leaden muscles.

One hand is clutching empty air, and the other is grasping under her pillow.

At the empty space under her pillow.

"Are you looking for this?"

Leela blinks, and the world rushes in.

She's in her bedroom. At home. She's not in the arena anymore.

She's still wearing her dress from the night before, but it's a wilted, ragged thing now. Her curls have dropped too. They're snarled over one shoulder, and there is mascara smeared in a panda ring around her eyelid. Leela can feel it, crunchy and stiff, still on her lashes. She must have been too tired to take any of it off last night. She only dimly remembers coming home.

There was wine, she remembers. When she and Fry got back inside the restaurant. Amy had been well and truly bombed by then, and wasn't providing much conversation. Fry hadn't been much in the mood to talk either, and for some reason Leela had been hyper-aware of his body beside her, and trying not to be. Pouring more wine had seemed like a good idea, at the time. It gave her something to do with her hands, and stopped her doing anything else with them. Like . . . putting them all over Fry.

That had seemed like a real possibility, for some reason. Why was that?

Her head _aches_.

And her mother is standing in front of her, holding the paring knife she's not supposed to know Leela sleeps with under her pillow.

"Leela," her mother says.

Leela realizes she's frozen again.

It keeps happening lately. It's as if her brain switches off, as if her mind goes elsewhere and leaves her body vacant, under someone else's control.

She's halfway upright, one hand still under her pillow and the other held out at chest height, trying to push down someone who isn't there. _Fry_ , she realizes. She's trying to push Fry out of danger.

Her mother says nothing, just stares at the hand until Leela regains control and lowers it again.

"How long have you been watching me?" Leela asks. Her voice is raspy. Morning-voice and hangover all in one, she thinks. "You know I hate it when you do that."

Munda sighs.

"I know."

"Then why do you do it?"

"I'm trying to understand."

"Understand what?"

Leela finds her nightshirt somewhere under the covers and uses it to wipe her face. The gunk they put on her for the cameras holds for hours at a time. She'll need hot water to take it off properly. But this will do for now.

"I need to take a shower," she says, hoping her mother will take the hint and leave her alone, at least long enough to piece together a coherent memory of last night.

She doesn't.

"You," Munda says simply. "I'm trying to understand you, Leela. Because I don't think I do anymore."

Leela stops, wary.

"Mom . . ." _Stop this,_ she thinks. _Please, don't do this._

Munda turns the knife over, staring down at it.

"I keep thinking," she says softly. "I keep trying to decide. When it was."

"When what?"

Munda smiles sadly.

"When I lost you." She takes a deep, careful breath. "For a while – for a long time – I thought it was in the Games. When you took that awful thing, and put it through that boy Jrr's head, I thought, _that's not my Leela_. And then you knocked that other boy into the water, and you let that Martian boy burn, and I thought, how can she do that? How can she kill another living thing? My baby? How can she do that?"

Leela says nothing. _Shut up_ , she wants to yell. _Shut up, shut up, shut up!_ But her voice seems stuck in her throat somehow, and the words won't come out.

"But the more I thought about it," Munda goes on, "the more I realized you weren't my Leela, anymore. You weren't my baby, and you hadn't been for, oh, such a long time." She sniffs. "You grew up, when I wasn't looking. You grew into somebody I don't know, and that scares me, Leela. I wish you could know how that scares me."

She shakes her head.

"Because I went wrong, you see. I let you down, my sweet, sweet girl. That was what I realized, when I looked back on it all. I kept going back and back, trying to figure it out. Trying to find the day, the moment when I lost you. And I realized, it was the day I lost Morris."

They both flinch, at the sound of his name. Leela's dead father, the catalyst for all this.

Munda pauses, then plunges on.

"The day I lost your father, I lost myself. I couldn't be a mother to you, not like you needed. Not like you deserved. It was my job to protect you, my job to keep you safe. And I failed. I couldn't see past my own grief, Leela. I thought you were so strong, but you were growing strong in all the wrong ways. And I couldn't see it. I couldn't steer you right."

"Mom -"

"No. No, this is my mistake, Leela. You can't take that away from me. I let you down. I led us here, I let this happen to you, and I will have to live with that knowledge for the rest of my life. And believe you me, I will." She wraps a tentacle around Leela's hand. "I can't change the past. You can't either, even if I wish you could." She squeezes, her suckers compressing Leela's fingers in a comforting embrace. "But I can be a mother to you now, if you'll let me. I can try."

She's crying, Leela realizes, numb with horror. Her mother – who has spent months tip-toeing around her, shoring her up, pretending everything is fine . . . . her mother is crying now.

"You do try," she says weakly.

Munda nods.

"Then . . . then talk to me," she says. "Please." She hesitates, then puts the knife carefully in Leela's other hand. "Why do you sleep with this under your pillow?"

Leela shuts her eye. Her pulse is pounding inside her skull.

"Because," she manages. "It makes me feel safe."

Munda frowns.

"You don't feel safe here? Leela, it's over. No-one's going to hurt you here."

"I know," Leela lies.

It won't ever be over, but she doesn't have the heart to explain that to her mother.

It's not the arena that scares her, not really. That's just a memory, her body reacting to something it doesn't realize isn't happening anymore. What scares her now is the future. A lifetime of being watched, of reliving the arena in her nightmares each night, of fearing every careless move in front of the cameras might be her last.

The things that scare her now aren't blood and guts. Fire and starvation seem straightforward, now, compared with her new terrors.

The emptiness in Amy's eyes.

The way Fry forgets to eat.

The sound of Jrr's name when she least expects it; the way her stomach drops and it makes her feel sick.

At least in the arena Leela knew what she was fighting – and so did everyone else. Out here, in the shiny vacuum-sealed world of the Victors Village, she isn't even allowed to admit it's a fight.

Leela feels her fingers settle comfortably into the grip of the knife. It's automatic, by now.

She can feel her mother's eye boring into her, still intent on the knife.

"I know it doesn't make sense," Leela says haltingly. "But sometimes I wake up in the night and I . . . I forget where I am. And I just need . . . something. So I can go back to sleep."

This gets a long silence, as her mother digests it. Her expression is closed off, and Leela can't tell what she's thinking.

"Something," Munda says at last.

Leela nods.

"Something," she echoes, praying it will be enough to stop her mother digging deeper.

But her mother has acquired a newfound ability to read between the lines of Leela's half-truths, and zero in on the thing she's trying hardest to obscure.

"Something," she says carefully. "Or someone?"

Leela flinches.

"Mom -"

"Oh, I know. I know." Munda takes the knife and sets it down by the lamp, out of Leela's reach. "You don't want to talk about it. But I think we need to have a – a conversation – about -"

"Mom -"

"- your boyfriend."

"He's not -"

"I think it's time we had a talk. Mother to daughter -"

"Mom, please, we really don't -"

"There are things I should have told you, about your body, and changes, at this age, that -"

"Oh my god, Mom!" Leela clamps her hands over her ears, horrified. "No!"

Munda purses her lips.

"This is as uncomfortable for me as it is for you, young lady. But clearly it's a conversation we need to have."

"No, we don't."

"Oh?"

Munda raises her eyebrow, and aims a very pointed look, for some reason, at Leela's neck.

Another fragment of lost memory returns, this one in a rush of heat.

 _Oh no,_ Leela thinks.

There has to be a reflective surface around here somewhere, something she can look in . . .

"Nothing happened," she insists.

Munda doesn't even dignify this with a response. She just levels her daughter with another look, and watches Leela squirm uncomfortably.

"Leela," she says. "I understand. I was a teenager once too. I remember how it feels. You're a crock pot of hormones and everything feels so, so . . . _urgent._ "

Leela cringes. This is unbearable. She wants to shrivel up in her own skin, like a caterpillar that never, ever intends to emerge.

"Please stop," she begs.

"You're feeling a lot of new feelings," Munda goes on, ignoring her. "A lot of new -"

 _Don't say "urges",_ Leela thinks, _don't say -_

"- urges," Munda continues -

"Ugh, Mom, _no_ -"

"- and you feel like you have to act on those urges . . ."

Lost in her own cocoon of horror, Leela has closed her eye. It jerks open again at the sound of familiar sniggering.

"Well, this sounds like a fun conversation."

"Amy?"

Of course it's Amy. She's the only one who regularly lets herself into Leela's house without knocking, and the only one who seems permanently, cynically amused by Leela's relationship with Fry.

She's back in her ugly casual sweats, and her face is shiny and tired-looking after last night's excess. Her bangs – pinned back from her forehead – are sticking up in every direction, and there are dark circles under her eyes. But she's smirking all the same.

"Amy." Munda's tone is politely disapproving. "How nice to see you. I didn't hear you ring the bell."

"Oh, I didn't."

Amy sits down on the end of Leela's bed. When she pulls her legs up to cross them under her, her sneakers drag against the covers. If she notices Munda's disapproving look, she gives no sign of it. Instead she takes a swig from her bottle of bright orange vitamin water.

When she raises the bottle, Leela can see powdery white pill residue sloshing around in the bottom.

(She pretends not to notice this, and fervently hopes her mother doesn't either.)

"Nice hickey," Amy says. She settles back against the wall, and tosses Leela a compact mirror.

It's worse than Leela expected. The mark was faint red last night, when they got back inside the restaurant, but she was able to cover it with her hair, and she assumed it would go down with time. Hours later, it hasn't.

It's turned purple.

Leela stares at it in horror.

Her mother has been looking at this all morning. Her _mother_.

She makes a tiny, desperate sound of embarrassment.

"Amy," her mother is saying. "Leela and I were in the middle of a conversation. A _private_ conversation."

Amy snorts.

"No, you weren't. She wasn't going to _tell_ you anything. You're her _mom_. If you wanna know if her and Rebel Without A Clue are doin' the do, you should ask someone else." She grins. "Like Fry. That boy cannot tell a lie." She swirls the bottle in her hand, watching the powder in the bottom disintegrate. "Or me."

She smiles, impervious to Leela's glare.

"For what it's worth, they're probably not."

"Probably," Munda echoes.

Amy shrugs.

"I mean, if they were doing the nasty, that hickey probably wouldn't be where everyone could see. And if that wasn't Leela's first hickey, she'd know how to cover it up." She reaches over and tweaks one of Leela's fallen curls. "Don't worry, I'll teach you."

"I hate you," Leela says flatly.

Her mother gasps "Leela! Don't be rude to your friend." But Amy only smirks at her, in a kind of sardonic kinship.

She pushes herself off the bed.

"Lover Boy's coming for breakfast," she says carelessly. "If he can get through it without more Fun Tales From The Orphanarium, I can tell you what I meant to tell you last night."

"Which is?"

Amy takes another deep gulp from the bottle in her hand.

"We have work to do."

* * *

Fry is bleary-eyed and hanging off Kif when he appears on her doorstep. He's wearing last night's shirt – which looked a lot better when it had the top three buttons attached – and his hair is severely rumpled. When he sees Leela, the tips of his ears turn bright red. It's not much – it's not his whole face, so he has learned to hide his feelings to some degree – but it's still a tell, and the way he struggles to tear his gaze away from her neck makes it all too clear he remembers last night.

"Leela. Um. Hey."

Munda turns a stern look on him, and he shrinks back a little.

"Um. Hey, Mrs Turanga."

"Philip."

Fry tries to smooth his hair, and his hands tug nervously at the collar of his shirt. It strikes Leela that this is the first time he has actually been in her kitchen. She'd always assumed he was avoiding people in general, when he stayed shut up in his house. But that isn't true. He sees Amy, and Kif. And he's always let Leela in. But he avoids her mother.

It's probably not just because he has impure thoughts about her daughter. It's the mother aspect, Leela realizes. He hasn't been around real parents for years. He doesn't know how to act.

Kif steps in to save him.

"Good morning, Mrs Turanga," he says. "I am sorry for the inconvenience, but Amy thought we should all eat together."

"Oh. Well, of course. Come in."

Her mother smiles, disarmed as always by Kif's immaculate manners.

Munda likes Kif. It helps that he doesn't let himself into her house, Leela supposes, but then, he's also non-human, unfailingly polite, and would die of shame before he got drunk and kissed anyone in a dark alley. He's the kind of boyfriend any mother would want for their teenage daughter. Leela suspects the only reason Munda hasn't tried to push them together is that she knows it wouldn't work.

"Please don't go to any trouble," he's saying now. "I'd be happy to prepare breakfast."

Leela shouldn't be surprised when he follows through on this promise. Twenty minutes later, Kif is wearing a frilly pink apron and they're surrounded by enough oatmeal, fresh fruit and waffles to feed the entire Victor's Village. Munda is sitting in the middle of it all, folding napkins in a vain attempt to contribute, and Amy is wearing something that almost looks like a genuine smile.

Fry put his head on his arms ten minutes ago and fell asleep at the table. He jolts upright when Amy snaps her fingers under his nose.

"Hey, Romeo. You gonna stay awake for this, or do you need a hit?"

She shakes the bottle at him.

"He's fine," Leela snaps, pushing it aside.

Munda frowns, and Kif smiles frantically at her.

"She's joking," he says. "Ha. Ha! Just a joke. A funny . . . joke . . ."

He tails off. Amy is looking at him like he's crazy.

"Su-uuure," she says slowly. "Just a joke."

She takes another protracted swallow, one eyebrow raised in surprise. But she doesn't contradict Kif, which surprises Leela. It's not like Amy to spare anyone's feelings. And it's not as if Amy is all that discreet about her habits. Last night was the first time she offered to share, but Leela knows she keeps a stash of pills in her purse. It's not just pills either. She's seen Amy snort white powder, top her kale smoothies up with vodka, and stick sedative patches on her arm when she can't sleep. And Leela suspects what she's seen is just the tip of an entire chemical iceberg keeping Amy afloat.

The worst part is, Amy seems to think it's normal. And maybe it is, in the glossy celebrity world of the Victors' Village. But it won't ever be normal to Leela. And she won't ever let it become normal for Fry.

She pushes a plate of pancakes at him, ignoring Amy.

"Here," she says. "Eat."

Amy snorts.

"Sweet. Does she always talk to you like that?"

Leela reddens.

She knows she can be bossy. It's another remnant of the arena, leftover from a time when Fry was too feverish to focus on anything but the most basic instructions. Even now, he gets so lost in his memories he needs Leela to pull him out of them, sometimes.

"You should eat something," she corrects, trying to sound softer.

"Okay," Fry says. He takes the fork, and prods tentatively at his food. "What's that thing?"

"A blueberry."

"Oh. Why's it purple?"

"It just is."

"Okay."

Fry pokes it mistrustfully with the tine of his fork, and reaches for the syrup instead. Munda and Kif watch in mute, fascinated horror as he drowns his pancakes in a sea of sugar.

"I . . . this is lovely, Kif," Munda says, struggling to tear her eyes away from Fry's plate. Somewhere deep inside her, Leela knows, some maternal instinct is screaming at her to take the syrup bottle away from him. "A lovely . . . meal . . ." She seems transfixed.

"Thank you, Mrs Turanga," Kif manages. He seems equally appalled, unable to wrench his eyes away.

They continue to stare, until Amy taps her spoon on the side of the orange juice, reclaiming their attention.

"There was a reason I called this breakfast," she reminds them.

Leela stiffens.

"Mom," she begins – but Amy cuts her off.

"She may as well stay. She needs to hear some of this too."

Leela narrows her eye.

"Some of what?"

Amy tips the last of the vitamin drink down her throat, shivering as the last of the undissolved pills hit her in a rush.

"We need to talk about the Tour."

 _The Victory Tour._

Leela feels suddenly cold. She puts down her fork. Beside her, Fry has stopped eating too.

"What about it?"

"We-elll." Amy's gaze turns flinty. "I don't know if you two lovebirds remember this – I don't know if you care, at all – but there was this thing, where I pulled your names out of a hat and they made me your mentor. And – ha – crazy thing about that! It means that everything you do reflects back on me."

"We didn't do anything," Fry says, frowning.

Amy laughs.

"Newsflash for you. The Tour? It's last night, over and over again. _Six months_ of last night, only with more people, more cameras, more _everything._ And you two . . ." She shakes her head.

"You need to prepare," Kif says gently. "The Tour is a big undertaking. You'll need to learn about all the planets you'll be visiting. You'll need to learn the right things to say. The right mannerisms to display. What's this?" he asks suddenly.

He's holding a knife.

"A knife," Leela says, obviously.

"Wrong," Kif chides her. "It's a butter knife."

"A knife is a knife," Leela says, irritated, but Kif only shakes his head.

"No, it isn't. This -" he taps the blade with one green forefinger "- is a butter knife. But it could have been a steak knife, or a bread knife. Or a fish slice. And in polite society, you'll be expected to know the difference. And pick the right knife accordingly."

"Can you dance?" Amy interjects.

"What?"

"Dance. Can. You?"

Leela feels herself redden again.

"No," she admits.

"I can dance," Fry says.

Amy rolls her eyes.

"Breakdancing isn't dancing," she scoffs.

Fry shrugs.

"Okay. Classy dances. We can do that. You can teach us."

Amy pours herself a cup of black coffee.

"Can I teach you to staple your mouth shut, every time you feel like taking a little trip down Orphanarium Memory Lane?" She gestures between him and Leela. "Can I teach you two to stop looking at each other with _"bang me_ " eyes?"

"I don't -" Leela starts to argue.

"Oh, please. Your brain melts anytime his hands wander somewhere PG-13."

Leela feels that flush again, creeping up her neck.

Fry is looking at her. She can feel it.

"I don't think this is helping," Kif says quietly.

"I don't care," Amy snaps. "Listen to me, both of you idiots. You're supposed to be in love. You're supposed to be this safe, cutesy little fairy tale. Our lives depend on you selling that story, so I don't care how you feel, or what kind of temporary insanity comes over you. You _sell the story_. You shut up, and you smile, and you do everything I tell you, for the whole of this tour. And then maybe, if we're lucky, we walk away and they let you fade into the background. Just two more mentors, who cares. Break out the fake smiles once a year for the cameras, and keep your mouths shut when your tributes die, and be _grateful_ you're not screaming in some dark room somewhere with your _fingernails_ ripped out. Because you have no idea how much worse it could be."

Silence follows her words. There is nothing but the thrum of the dishwasher; the rattle of the handful of spoons Kif threw in to make more noise. Drowning out their conversation for the bug Leela knows is hidden under a fake tile above it.

Not that President Nixon would care. He wants them to have this conversation, Leela feels sure. He wants these images in her head. He wants Munda to stop fighting Leela's relationship with Fry. He wants them all to play their roles properly on the Tour.

Now they all know exactly what the stakes are.

Amy sighs. Maybe she's just coming down from her high, but she suddenly looks tired. Exhausted, even.

"Can you do that?" she says wearily. "Can you at least _try?_ "

Leela can't talk. She nods instead.

Fry nods too.

Kif stares down at his waffles, his expression pained.

Her mother says nothing.

"Good," Amy says. "Pass the syrup."


	5. Chapter 5

They start the next morning, when Fry has sobered up enough to take at least some of it in. Victory Tour prep is mostly in Kif's hands at first, as it's still fresh in his mind from last year and Amy has a busy schedule of late night parties to maintain.

The first thing Leela learns is that Kif wasn't kidding about how much preparation is required for the Tour.

He opens with a crash course on the history of the Empire, and the current state of each colony planet. Leela is familiar with the overview (there were mandatory news broadcasts every time Nixon subjugated a new planet, even in the sewer) but the specifics quickly swamp her. The governor of Mars. The climate on Neptune. The principal exports of the Amphibios cluster. Her head is swimming after just one afternoon, and Fry quickly acquires the blank, lost look of someone about to get an F on a test paper.

They move on to dinner, where Leela learns the difference between a soup spoon and a dessert spoon, a fish knife and a butter knife, a water glass and a wine glass. She learns how to crack open oysters without sending the shell flying three feet away from her, and how to swallow fish-eye delicacies and stuffed songbirds without giving any visible hint of disgust. Kif prepares her for some of the things she'll see at these dinners too: desserts set on fire for effect, and animals stuffed five deep inside other animals, and the shocking, infuriating wastefulness of the people she'll be dining with, who have never gone hungry a day in their lives. Eventually Leela picks it up, but Fry never does. Even though Kif successfully trains him out of eating with his mouth full and drowning all his food in offensive amounts of sugar, Fry still fumbles over which fork to use, and how to politely peel the scale coat off his fish. It's Leela who suggests they give up, and just train him to unobtrusively copy her instead. This works better. Fry spends so much time staring at her anyway that it seems natural. People will just think he's in love.

This development is the only one Amy shows any real interest in, when she comes crashing in at last.

"That's practically genius," she says lazily.

Leela recognizes the drawl of a sedative in her mentor's voice. Something mixed with alcohol, maybe. There is lipstick on her teeth, and she's wearing a dress of such skin-tight latex Leela doesn't know how she got into it, let alone how she'll peel herself free later. But she seems calm and she's being only minimally sarcastic, so by Amy standards, this is a good day.

It's Amy who sees the potential of just teaching Fry to follow Leela's lead.

She has them devise a set of codes, so they can communicate without words on the tour, and Leela can keep Fry in check. Touching his elbow means "stop talking". Rubbing her ear lobe means "we're being watched". Brushing her shoulder against his means "put your arm around me now", and touching the inside of his wrist means "kiss me for the cameras".

It's depressing. It makes Leela feel like a puppet master, even though she can see the sense in it. Still, she hates it. Hates feeling like Fry's mentor, prompting him through some never-ending version of their post-Games interview. Hates the way Amy makes him kiss her, close-mouthed and polite, and how she has to just _stand_ there, pretending her body doesn't hum like a live wire under his touch.

Because it does, and this show of chaste, passionless affection isn't helping. That night at the Splendor infected her with a kind of restlessness, a kind of hunger, to touch and be touched back. Leela replays it in her mind at night, as she tries to sleep. The feel of Fry's warm breath on her neck. His hand on her waist, his mouth on hers. The way she could pin him in place with the smallest movement. The convulsive shudder that ran through him head to toe, when she shifted her hips just _so_ . . .

The feeling fascinates Leela. It suggests a lack of control that thrills her. She wants to reproduce it, to push him further, watch him fall over that edge, and know she caused it.

Unfortunately, this new fixation of hers hasn't escaped her mother's notice. As Leela still won't have the excruciating conversation her mother wants, Munda has fallen back on a tactic of constant chaperoning. She sits in on every tedious minute of Tour prep, and watches Leela with Peacekeeper levels of suspicion. If her daughter's hands stay on Fry for half a second longer than absolutely necessary, the throat-clearings and sharp looks start.

The end result is that Leela and Fry are never alone. Fry seems accepting of this (he's used to adults treating him as if he's completely unworthy of trust) but Leela finds it unbelievably frustrating. The only thing that enables her to swallow it and smile is the knowledge that Munda is fighting a losing battle. She won't be allowed on the Tour. Amy has convinced the Gamemakers to allow her to bring Kif along for the ride – so there will be one mentor per tribute, as usual – but parents have never been permitted on the Tour, so Leela's mother will be staying behind.

And Leela will, finally, be completely alone with Fry.

It's the only thing that makes the thought of the Tour bearable. As the weeks of mind-numbing preparation wear on, and the New Year draws closer, Leela finds herself feeling sick at the thought of it. She'll have to plaster on this fake smile, day after day, for weeks. She'll have to meet the families of the tributes she killed, and and look them in the eye, knowing how much they must hate her. Knowing they'll wish she had died instead. She'll have to relive it, every sick moment of the Games. _Now_ , when the memories are finally starting to recede. It's cruel.

But she knew that. Cruelty is the whole point of the Games. Why would the Tour be any different?

* * *

Amy takes over eventually, as there are things Kif can't teach Leela. How to walk in high heels, how to preserve her modesty in a dress (never raise it above the ankles, never lean too far forward, always keep her knees together ), and then body language, which Leela is abhorrently bad at. Amy makes her pose, standing and sitting, until she gets it right; perfects that knees-together, legs-crossed-at-the-ankle, stomach-sucked-in, cleavage-gently-thrust-out, back-straight, chin-tucked-in posture that comes so naturally to Amy, but Leela can't keep straight in her head at all. Fry has his own problems – slouching, tugging at his collar, gesturing way too wildly when he talks – but, as Amy explains, Leela is the one people will be judging. There is some ultra-feminine ideal Leela is supposed to live up to, as a humanoid female, and can't escape.

Leela has never been feminine. Nothing pretty or delicate ever survived long in the sewer, so it wasn't a priority. Nor did it ever seem useful. Skirts get in her way, make-up feels like oily gunk painted onto her face, and Leela just doesn't see the point in all the exaggerated, pantomime motions Amy makes her practice – in batting her eyelashes or giggling at a higher pitch, or . . . any of it. No woman Leela ever knew in the sewer behaved like that.

It's supposed to be about desirability, Amy tells her, and Leela almost laughs, because the whole thing is absurd. The only person she's ever wanted to desire her already does.

Fry doesn't care if she's short-tempered. He doesn't care if she works out every day. He doesn't care if she leaves her pretty dresses untouched in the closet and wears his cargo pants and hiking boots instead. He doesn't care if she keeps her hair in the same lazy braid every day, and he hates when the stylists try to contour her face or smooth over her freckles. Any version of Leela she's not comfortable being makes _him_ uncomfortable. But apparently, Fry is a freak in the world of desire, and no-one else finds Leela's natural state acceptable.

It's no better when they start dance lessons. The female partner in a dance is always supposed to be graceful. She's not supposed to step on her partner's feet every five minutes, or accidentally try to lead, or count under her breath so she has a permanent look of intense concentration on her face.

She's not supposed to be Leela, in other words.

It doesn't help that Fry is so _natural_ at this. He makes it look easy, even when he can't keep up with the count and hums nonsense under his breath instead: _dum, da-dum, dum_ instead of _one, two, three._

"I can't do it!" Leela explodes eventually.

She reels away from Amy and kicks off her hated dance shoes, scowling.

"I won't do it. I don't need to dance. We can just sway in circles, or, _twirl_ -"

Kif winces. Amy takes a bump of something, shrugs, and tells her : "Your funeral."

Fry frowns.

"You think about it too much," he says. "You make it too hard. You should just do what the music does."

Leela narrows her eye.

"The music comes out of the speaker, Fry."

"No, I mean . . ."

Fry abandons Kif, and whatever step he was supposed to be learning, and crosses to Leela instead. He doesn't mirror her. Instead he winds his arm around her waist, and takes her hand in his, as if they've finished learning the dance and can do the whole thing already.

Leela feels her breath catch instinctively, as he pulls her close.

"I'll show you. See, when the music's slow like this," he says, "it's just killing time, so we just go in circles."

He moves her, steering her in gentle circles as he hums along. The music picks up, the beat becoming more insistent.

"And now it's like we're getting nervous. Ba-bum, ba- _bum_ . . . and you step in . . . and I pull out . . ."

Fry's hands guide her and they fall into an easy push-pull, a rhythm as natural as breathing. The music climbs imperceptibly around them.

"And I step in . . . and you pull out . . . and we go in . . . and out . . ."

They're dancing around the room, some old timey fusion step with an R 'n' B vibe, and Leela knows the others are watching them, knows she should be trying to remember what in the hell her feet are doing. But she can't. Her body is reacting without any conscious input, and she can't take her eyes off Fry's face. There is something utterly captivating about seeing him so focused, for once.

"And then I push into your dance space, and this time you . . . yeah, you step in too! See, you're getting it! And we go in, and in, and _in_ . . ."

They're chest to chest now, hip to hip, breathless and panting, and Leela hears Amy say something that sounds like "got to be kidding me". She can feel her cheeks flush furious pink, but Fry is still intent on the dance, and everything else feels distant anyway.

"And now the beat - goes up - and loud - because it's going crazy for the big finale," Fry pants. "So I put my hands over your back like this, and you . . . right, you wrap your leg around me like . . . like . . . that . . . and then I . . . lower you down . . ." He swallows, his breathing labored as he looks down at her in his arms. At their bodies, wound together. "And . . . and that's . . . dancing."

Leela says nothing. She's still trying to catch her breath. Her heart is beating wildly, out of control, and . . .

The music stops. They hold their position, staring at each other.

" _That_ ," Amy says into the silence, "isn't dancing."

Fry turns red, and he and Leela break apart.

"She was good," he says weakly.

"Well, clearly she rocked your world," Amy snorts. "I mean, you two were two layers of fabric away from making a porno."

Kif makes a tiny, flustered sound. Munda stays silent. She looks like she's had a small stroke.

"The dancing was better," Amy concedes at last. "If I throw a bucket of water over you, you think you could do it again? But maybe this time, _not_ looking like you want to tear off each other's clothes for the grand finale? Because that would be super."

Sometimes, Leela thinks she might hate her mentor.

* * *

At half past five in the morning, Leela wakes to voices on her front porch. She freezes, grasping for a knife her mother long ago took away, and then relaxes as the voices filter through her open window.

Her mother, and Amy.

What they have to talk about, Leela can't guess, but it can't be anything dangerous. Their voices are even and unhurried.

She pads down the stairs, soundless on bare feet, and risks peering out.

Her mother is wearing a robe and fluffy slippers, and looks as if she's been waiting up. Amy is wearing a dress of shimmering floor-length foil. The top half of it is little more than a leather harness, strapped over her bare breasts. She's smoking again, the cigarette a glowing red dot in the dark.

Leela has caught them mid-conversation.

"She's sixteen," Munda is saying. "She thinks she's all grown up, because of these Games, but she's a child, Amy. She's _my_ child. She doesn't know what she's doing."

"Don't worry," Amy says flippantly. "She'll learn."

"Enough," Munda says sharply. "Enough of that."

To Leela's surprise, Amy falls quiet. Her voice, when she next speaks, is heavy.

"Okay," she says. "You want the truth? Fine. You don't know what you're talking about."

Munda flinches, but Amy goes on.

"You think you know what she's feeling, because you watched her in the Games. But you don't have a clue. You don't know how it feels to stick a knife in someone's throat. The blood. The way they . . . kind of twitch, you know?"

Amy ghosts her hand over Munda's throat, the tip of the cigarette a cherry red streak in the air.

"The look in their eyes," she says dully. "See, the camera doesn't catch that. But you do, when you're that close. And you get to play it on rerun inside your skull, every day for the rest of your life." She sucks down the last of the cigarette smoke, watching it flare into ash. Her eyes, when they turn on Munda again, are hard. "And now you want to take away the one thing that helps her stand it."

"No." Munda's voice cracks. " _No._ I want to save her from herself. She's her mother's daughter, Amy. Maybe I don't know who she's becoming. Maybe I can't understand. But I know what's in her blood, I know the child I had, and I can't let her fall in love with a boy who would throw his life away for her so easily. Like it doesn't matter!" Her tentacles knot wildly. "He's not like you, Amy. Or her. He's not a survivor. That boy will die before President Nixon is through with him, and Leela . . ." She shakes her head. "I can't let him break her heart."

Amy sighs. She sinks onto the porch swing, and rests her head against the chain.

"See, this is why no-one else here has parents. You noticed that, right? You're the only one."

"I - "

"They can't stick it." Amy stares down at her feet, watching her high heels scrape across the boards as she swings gently back and forth. "Cobb's family think he's a freak. And Kif? He offered to move his parents out here. To Earth. They were the whole reason he even entered the Games, you know? He wanted to get them out of the Amphibios cluster." She gives a hollow little laugh. "But they wouldn't come. He sends them money every month, with a letter, and every month they send it back with nothing. They think he's a monster."

She tips her head back, gives one single, more forceful, swing.

"He doesn't realize how lucky he is," she says, when the motion stops. "That they don't want him anymore. If they did, they'd try to protect him."

Munda swallows.

"From what?"

Amy shrugs.

"This place. This fucking carnival ride we're all on." Her eyes glint in the dark. "Elzar's parents tried that. The first year of the Games. _Caring_. But they must have cared a little too much, because he went away on the Victory Tour and while he was gone, oops, what do you know? There just so happened to be a tragic fire. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

There is silence, as they stare at each other in the dim porch light.

At last, Munda speaks.

"I think so."

Amy pushes herself off the swing.

"Good. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Amy."

Amy is halfway to the gate when Munda calls after her.

"Drink some water before you go to bed," she says, her voice quavering in the cold air. "And put some warm clothes on, you hear? You'll catch your death."

At this distance, and in this light, Amy's expression is impossible to make out. But she stops at the gate a moment, looking back.

She shakes her head, Leela thinks, and then her voice floats back through the night air.

"So will you," she says quietly. "If you start caring about me."

And then she turns away, and Leela hurries back up the stairs, before her mother can catch her eavesdropping on this conversation.

* * *

Back in bed, Leela stares up at the ceiling, trying to tease out her own thoughts.

So her mother doesn't hate Fry. She's afraid.

Because she doesn't think he's a survivor.

Because she thinks Leela is falling in love with him.

Leela swallows.

Is she?

 _Does_ she love Fry?

She turns her head, staring across at the yellow light of Fry's bedroom window. She can hear the soft thump of a bass speaker, even at this distance. Is he awake? Or can he sleep through that?

Does she love Fry, she wonders again. It's a question she has always avoided. In the arena it was too dangerous a thought, when her first priority was supposed to be survival. Out here, it feels dangerous in another way.

Fry loves her. He has never tried to hide that. And Leela . . . cares for him. More than anyone in the universe, maybe, except for her mother. She is protective of him. Possessive, even. She can't deny the sick twist in her stomach when he mentions other girls, or her feeling that he should be hers, that they have been bound together in some way since the very start.

And she wants him, in ways she can't describe but can't deny.

But is that love?

Leela has nothing to compare it to. Fry's love seemed to hit him like a thunderbolt at the age of twelve. But whatever Leela feels is different. It's like something growing slow inside her, buried too deep for her to root it out. She has never been able to explain it, and she still can't; this thing that made her run when they first met, that made her push Fry away at the start of the Games. Was it instinct, then? Self-preservation?

She doesn't know.

But she does know it's getting stronger.


	6. Chapter 6

Leela doesn't have much chance to dwell on her feelings for Fry though, whatever they might be. Victory Tour prep fills her every waking hour.

And there's something else.

Earth is facing the worst winter in living memory. The cold almost doesn't seem natural – blizzards and sub-zero temperatures planet-wide – but no-one can find an explanation for it. The best anyone can do is ride it out, and that's getting harder and harder for those not living like Leela in the lap of luxury.

People are starving. Unseasonal hurricanes destroyed much of the summer crop in the American corn belt, and parasites have decimated the stock in the shrimp vats in south-east Asia. These are presented to the public as freak occurrences, and they must be – they _must_ be, that food feeds Earth, the workers would only be hurting themselves if they destroyed it – but something about it seems wrong to Leela. Too coincidental, too well-timed.

But it can't be sabotage. The people of Earth – outside of Nixon's privileged inner circle – have never had it easy, exactly, but no-one can deny they are treated ten times better than those on other planets. They have the least cause to rise up against the Empire. And even if they didn't . . . what would be the point? Everyone knows a popular uprising couldn't bring Nixon down. Everyone knows his Peacekeepers are too many, too well-armed, too ruthless for the average person to defeat. Nixon has weapons that could annihilate whole cities in a day. It would be suicide to go up against him without an equal opposing force. And that would mean ships, bombs, soldiers in their millions.

The scale of Nixon's empire might be the greatest threat to it – it's straining at the seams, as he struggles to keep pace with the demand on his resources – but that scale is also what keeps him so safe. One planet alone could never stand against him. They wouldn't make a dent.

Even if everyone rose up at once, what could they do? How long could they hold out for?

Weeks. Months, maybe. One last stand, before Nixon wiped them out and enslaved whoever survived.

This idle speculation doesn't help anyone. It's just stupid dreams, pointless rage, like the kind she felt in the arena. But part of Leela can't help noticing, can't help wondering, can't stop turning the whole thing over in her mind, every time she reads between the lines on another news bulletin. Part of her can't help but wonder if something really is happening, out there in the Empire if not here on Earth.

They must be angry, out there. Kif has made it clear to her the kind of conditions other species face. How they live daily with fear, exhaustion, starvation.

When President Nixon announces his plans to import food – when he swears that no Earthican citizen will starve this winter – Leela sees Kif's face go tight. He doesn't have to speak a word for her to read his thoughts. Earth will be fed while his people starve.

To combat all this unhappiness, Nixon insists Fry and Leela step up their fairy tale. They go for fake dinners, fake coffee dates, fake ice-skating. They pose for an Xmas card to the nation, wearing matching ugly sweaters and pucker-kissing under the mistletoe. Leela smiles until her jaw aches.

It's not enough, she knows. It never was in the sewer. When her mother was sick and her father was dead and she was struggling to make it from one day to the next, there was never even a fraction of a second where she looked at some beautiful surface girl on TV and forgot she was living in hell.

There is no point – to any of this. It's as useless as her rage in the arena, it's all just smoke and mirrors, and no-one _cares_. But Amy made her warnings clear, and Leela knows she doesn't have a choice. They have to watch, and she has to perform, and on New Year's Day, she'll leave for the Tour and there won't be a person anywhere who can avoid the show. This smiling, waving, sickening facade will become her life for the next six months, and her face will fill every screen in Earth's empire.

And so will Fry's.

He doesn't talk any more about the Tour – maybe because they're never alone – but Leela can see his mounting anxiety, as it draws nearer. Jrr's tiny model Earth almost never leaves his hands now. Fry rolls it back and forth when he's nervous, bouncing it off his knee or the tip of his shoe, in a futile attempt at distraction.

He still hates the cameras, and has brutal flashbacks to the Games when the lights start to pop. It's worse for him, Leela thinks, because he spent so much of the Games in a state of delirium. His feelings were all heightened, but his perception of events was blurred and intangible, making it harder to identify anything that might trigger a flashback. On a bad day, the cold of a blizzard, to Fry, feels no different to the cold of his own impending death. The smell of Munda's cleaning products puts him right back on a sterile operating table. The smell of uncooked meat is the smell of Jrr's carrion breath, a hungry mouth stretching wide. Heavy rain brings him out in a cold sweat. On their ice-skating date the cold and camera flashes affect him so badly he throws up, and Leela has to shield him from view with her muff.

Not that she can talk. She only makes it through that date herself by clutching Fry's hands tight enough to cut the circulation off, and refusing to look away, even for a second, from his eyes. (They just about sell this as romantic.) She isn't doing any better at conquering her own demons. She still wakes up screaming at night, still reaches for a weapon at the slightest provocation, still sees her own flashback horror show every time she shuts her eye.

The only thing that makes it fade is Fry. Amy was right about that.

Leela doesn't know how she would have done this on her own. She knows Fry wouldn't cope without her. They keep each other going, the way they did in the arena.

In some ways, Leela feels like they're still there. Like the Games never ended.

She wonders if Amy was right about that too. If she'll feel this way for the rest of her life. If, one day, that same feeling will break Fry and she'll be left to face Nixon's demands alone.

Of all the horrors inflicted on her in the Games, it was Fry, slipping away from her hour by hour, that was the hardest to take.

But she didn't lose him, she reminds herself. He's here with her, right now, in defiance of everything her mother thinks. He _did_ survive.

And he'll go on surviving, because that was the promise Leela made to herself, when he offered her his life in the arena. When he killed for her. Trusted her. Came back for her.

Fry will always survive, as long as Leela is alive to fight for him.

* * *

In mid-December, they receive a shock. Abner Doubledeal is dead.

Gored by a wild buggalo on a hunting trip to Mars, or so the official story goes. Amy snorts when the newsreader reports it though, and when Leela catches her eye she makes a crude gesture – head to one side, tongue lolling out of her mouth, tugging on an imaginary rope to one side of her neck. Leela doesn't need it spelled out to know what she's implying.

It shouldn't come as a surprise. Doubledeal presided over the worst Games in history, from Nixon's point of view. He let a human in, he let that human _win_. He allowed himself to be blackmailed by his own tributes. Of course he had to go. It's probably not even a recent development, this death. Nixon has probably just been sitting on the announcement until he could find a replacement.

That replacement turns out to be Hermes Conrad, a middle-aged bureaucrat. He gives a dull, rote speech about what an honor it will be to command the Games, but overall he comes off a safe choice. Someone who would never crown two Victors in a single year, because he would neither panic nor think so quickly on his feet. If Hermes Conrad had been her Head Gamemaker, Leela thinks, she and Fry would have pushed those poison blowdarts into their hearts and died in a minute.

In fact, Leela thinks she has Conrad all figured out. Until she sees his wife.

LaBarbara Conrad is a tall, strikingly beautiful Caribbean woman. Amy frowns at the sight of her, and Leela knows they're thinking the same thing. A man as apparently uninspiring as Hermes Conrad doesn't get a wife like that. Somewhere, deep down, this new Head Gamemaker has _flair_.

Leela feels sick at the thought. Already she tries to avoid thoughts of next year, when she and Fry will have to go back to the Games as mentors, and ready their own tributes to die.

Next year is going to be big. All the smiling TV hosts have decided Abner Doubledeal was a disgrace for failing to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Games, and the new Head Gamemaker has already announced that the Victory Tour will be more lavish than usual to make up for this failing. And there are rumors flying about next year's Games. How they'll have some special twist to celebrate this milestone.

Some say there are going to be twice as many tributes. Some say this arena will be the deadliest yet. The only piece of information Leela trusts is the one she gets from Amy, who tells them something memorable is definitely planned for next year. Work on the arena has already begun, and it's going to be ten times the standard size. Workers are being diverted from the ice mines on Halley's Comet to aid in its construction. Twenty workers die a day, and still the pace continues. There is no question of slowing down. Nixon's deadly new arena will be ready by the summer, no matter how many people die to build it.

Two days later there is another mandatory broadcast, this one to announce the commencement of war with Omicron Persei 8.

This shouldn't come as a surprise either. Jrr's father, Lrrr, might not have cared about his son, but apparently watching him die in an Earthican death contest was an insult to the family pride. Though Nixon tried to placate his "Omicronian allies" with extravagant gifts and flattering speeches, by early December anyone could see the two nations were headed for war.

Personally, Leela thinks Lrr is a fool. Earth only left his planet alone all this time because his people are savage fighters, and anyway, they have nothing Nixon wants. Now, however, with his pride at stake, Nixon has no problems initiating a deadly bombing campaign.

The bombardment continues for seven days. On the eighth day, Lrr's fortress is turned to rubble. He is declared dead, and his people surrender.

The workers of Earth are granted a half day in celebration of this triumph. And there is a parade. Four thousand soldiers, marching through the Omicronian streets in a show of force.

The soldiers salute, and the Omicronian heads roll, and the newscasters mouth the same old hollow slogans, just in case anyone on Earth was dumb enough to forget. That this is what it looks like.

Peace, prosperity, and the Earthican Way.

* * *

Leela's only respite is Xmas Day. Kif and Amy agree to give them the day off from Tour prep, and Munda even softens enough to invite Fry for dinner. She invites Kif and Amy too, but Leela still recognizes the invitation for what it is: a peace offering.

She doesn't know what to make of that.

To her surprise, however, dinner goes well. Fry only sugars his pumpkin pie, and is effusive in his praise for Munda's cooking. Kif and Munda drive most of the conversation with food-related chit-chat, and for once Amy actually keeps her promise to stick only to alcohol. Not even spirits either. Just wine. (Leela wonders how Kif managed to talk her into that.)

Leela has some wine too. Not enough to get her drunk. Just one glass, which leaves her feeling pleasantly warm and fond of everyone around her. (Even Amy.)

After dinner they turn the heat up and sit and watch the flames dance in the fake fire. It's almost like the real thing, but without the ash and crackling that bring Leela flashing back to Celgnar's death. It's cozy.

They swap gifts. Amy shrugs indifferently at this point – apparently gift giving is an element of Xmas she managed to forget – but Kif gives them all house plants, and Munda passes out little mason jars of homemade cookies, personalized for each of them. (Leela is unsurprised to see Fry's are sugar cookies.) Leela gives Fry another car racing video game, and Fry gives her a black leather jacket his stylist gave him the week before. Then he volunteers to do the dishes for Munda. As he disappears into the kitchen, precariously balancing a stack of plates, Kif puts on the radio and old-fashioned Xmas tunes fill the room.

Munda lights a candle – a tall white one in front of the fireplace – and then she wraps her tentacles around Leela and they sit quietly, watching the tiny light dance in the fading day.

They don't say anything. They don't need to.

They both know who they're thinking of.

When the candle burns low, it's Leela who gets up to blow it out. She bends down, and exhales gently over the flame, and lets go of her father for another year.

* * *

In the kitchen, Fry is up to his elbows in soapy water. He has used way too much liquid detergent – the sink is foaming over – but Leela finds she doesn't mind. Little soap bubbles bob in the air like snowflakes, and where they float up to the ceiling, they catch the lights and make them shine, an iridescent haze.

She must make some sound, as she stands there in the doorway, because Fry turns around.

"Hey," he says.

She's smiling, Leela realizes suddenly. It's not much – her muscles feel like they hardly remember how to do it – but it's real and unmistakable. Here, in this moment, she suddenly feels completely calm.

Fry lets the pan he's holding fall back into the sink, and shakes the suds off his hands. His face has gone soft, hazy like the lights above.

"Hey, Leela," he says softly. "Look up."

Leela follows his gaze upwards. She almost laughs when she sees it, pinned to the lintel.

"Mistletoe," she murmurs.

"Mistletoe," Fry confirms.

And then he's there in front of her, wet hands soaking her sweater as he encircles her waist. But Leela doesn't care, because she stepped into his arms first, and now she feels warmer than the wine, watching him smile.

"Merry Christmas, Leela," Fry says, in his weird old-fashioned way.

And then he kisses her, sweet and slow, and for the first time since the Games – for the first time since her father died – Leela feels a far-off flare of happiness. Or . . . of hope, that she could find it one day.

She rests her forehead against his and breathes in slow. She wants to hold onto this feeling, this moment, and never let it go.

"Merry Xmas, Fry," she whispers.


	7. Chapter 7

It's New Year, and Victor's Village is frozen over. When Leela breathes out, her breath fans out in front of her, a sheet of icy white.

She left her gloves inside, and her hands are turning numb.

She could go back inside for them, Leela knows . . . but that would mean facing her mother, and finishing her packing, and . . .

They leave in an hour.

She breathes in. Holds it. Breathes out again.

 _You can do this_ , she tells herself.

It's just pictures. It's just dinners. It's just speeches.

She can do this.

Leela shivers, and tells herself it's just the cold.

Her stylists have her dressed for the first stop on the Tour already, in a white angora sweater dress and hideous polar bear fur boots. Leela is trying not to think about how many animals gave their lives to make this outfit. Or how many families the silver-and-moonstone pendant around her neck could feed back home in the sewer.

"Hey."

Leela looks up, and realizes Fry is sitting on his doorstep. He's watching her, head tilted slightly to one side.

How long has he been doing that? How long has she been out here? Leela realizes she has no idea.

She tries to straighten up, by tiny, unnoticeable degrees.

"How long have you been out here?"

Fry shrugs.

"A while. Kif said I was getting in the way."

"Kif is packing for you?" Leela says incredulously.

Fry shrugs again.

"He said I wasn't doing it right. I wasn't putting my shoes on the bottom. Or on the top. Whichever one it was supposed to be. And he wanted me to roll my socks" - he pulls a face - "and pack _ties_. I can't even tie a tie. At the orphanarium all the ties had elastic that went under the collar, and they smelled like old man. Warden Vogel had a whole box of them. He used to give them out every year on picture day. Did you have picture day in the sewer?"

"No."

"Oh." Fry considers this. "No-one told me they have polar bears on the moon," he says suddenly.

Leela blinks. She's getting better at following his train of thought, but every so often Fry takes a wild swing into new territory, and she finds herself lost.

The shoes, she realizes. He's transfixed by the furry abominations on her feet.

"I think they're supposed to be fashion," she explains.

"Oh. Well, they're ugly."

Fry stands up and takes her hand, helping her navigate the ice as she climbs his porch steps.

"And we match again," he notes.

They do, Leela realizes. Fry is wearing dark blue pants and his shoes are suede, but he's wearing an angora sweater the twin of her own, and a little silver-moonstone pin. They've done something to his hair too – swept it back off his face and crinkled a curl through it, like some old world movie star. There is so much product involved Leela thinks it might crunch if she touched it. Overall, Fry looks as unlike himself as she does.

"Why do they always do that?" he's saying.

"Do what?"

"Match us." Fry gestures between them. "Like we're married. Or twins." A horrifying new thought seems to occur to him. "Or _married twins_. It's creepy."

Leela shrugs and feigns ignorance. In truth, she knows why Amy and the stylists do it. They're trying to make her and Fry seem like one entity; two halves of a whole, instead of two individual Victors. They want people to forget that awkward fact, and the rebellious closing act to the Games.

The wind picks up. Snowflakes are sticking to Leela's cheek now, and she's starting to lose all feeling in her face. Fry's hand, in hers, doesn't feel much warmer.

Once again, she wonders how long he's been out here.

A little lull of silence has fallen over them both again. Fry squeezes her hand gently, as if trying to pull her back from far away.

He could kiss her, Leela thinks. He's standing close enough to do it.

She wonders if a kiss - out here - would feel the way it did at Xmas.

But Fry doesn't try and Leela doesn't know how to ask, so they stand facing each other instead.

Hand in hand. Waiting.

"Are you nervous?" Leela hears herself ask.

Fry's hand contracts in hers at this allusion to the Tour - a tiny spasm she knows he doesn't intend. A shadow falls over his face.

"I don't know," he says. "But I know I don't want it to start. I keep waking up in the night," he admits. "All sweaty and like I can't breathe. Like I'm back in the arena."

"I get that too," Leela admits.

Fry nods.

"I don't know how to make it stop. But" - he hesitates, then plunges on - "if I have to go on the Tour, then I'm glad we have to go together. I mean . . ." He colors. "I'm not glad you have to go, but I – I'm glad you'll be there. With me."

Leela nods slowly. As much as Fry struggles to put his point across, she thinks she understands what he means. If you have to face horrors, she thinks, it's better not to face them alone.

"I . . me too." She wets her lips. "Fry - "

She stops, frowning. There is a sound at the edge of her hearing, a thrum in the air she recognizes from her last day in the sewer; from her stomach-churning ride to the arena; from those last nightmare moments of the Games.

It's the engine of a hovercraft.

Fry is frowning too. He's trying to speak now, but the engine is right overhead, and the noise is unholy – engine and rotor blades and howling wind, a maelstrom of sound that drowns him out. Not that Leela needs to hear him. He can only be expressing what she knows herself – that the hovercraft shouldn't be here for another hour, and it's supposed to be white and gold, and . . .

The seal of the empire is printed on the side, matte against the shining black. Leela barely has time to absorb it – Earth, ringed by the tiny stylized planets of the Empire – before the hovercraft touches down, and Peacekeepers dressed in beetle-black come pouring out.

Body armor. Leela recognizes the basic concept from the Peacekeepers she knew in the sewer, though theirs never shone like this, and they never had real helmets. And they never pointed their guns with such cold precision.

Fry is still staring. Leela yanks him back – into the shadows, out of the _way_ – but his movements are too slow. He's not used to Peacekeepers, Leela realizes. The orphanarium had its own jailers. And he's human. He doesn't know how it feels to have a passing Peacekeeper kick you for fun. He's never seen them shoot out windows out of boredom, or spit at kids, or get drunk and trash someone's home to let off steam. He doesn't know the rules of engagement with Peacekeepers.

 _Make yourself invisible. Stay out of their way. Never make eye contact. Never talk back._

Fry doesn't _know_ these things.

"Get _down_ ," she hisses, but it's too late. The Peacekeepers are upon them.

They drag Leela up by the arm. Her stupid fashion boots skid uselessly on the ice and she can't get her balance, can't keep up . . . she goes down hard, hip bone smacking painfully against the crazy-paving of the garden path. Fry cries out and there's a meat-sounding smack; a rifle butt against soft flesh. When they pull Leela up, Fry is doubled over. They either hit him in the back or the stomach – from this distance, it's hard to tell.

 _Not the face_ , she notes, and a chill runs down her spine.

Another Peacekeeper steps out of her house.

"Sweep's clear," he says to the one holding her, and then he moves off, talking in code into a little black box on his arm. A radio, Leela thinks.

They march her mother out of the house, over to Fry's front porch, where Kif is standing with his hands up, staring warily down the barrel of a gun. More Peacekeepers are shouting inside the house. Looking for Amy, probably. But Leela doesn't get to see her mentor brought out, because the Peacekeepers are already herding her and Fry back into the house.

They jostle her on – guns prodding into the small of her back – but it brings her closer to Fry, and Leela is able to grab his arm as they're pushed together. He's still wheezing from the blow, but his fingers find hers somehow and they lock, tight, together.

They're in the kitchen now, backed against the wall. Waiting.

The Peacekeepers take up point positions – two with their guns trained on Leela and Fry, the rest covering windows and exits – and the lead turns his blank, helmeted face to the door. They're waiting too, Leela realizes. She can hear a wheezing for breath suddenly, one that isn't just Fry anymore, and then there are heavy dragging footsteps in the hallway.

And there is a smell. It's chemical, preservative, and . . .

 _Mutt,_ she thinks illogically. That's not right, that's not possible . . . but there is an underlying smell of death in the room, and from the way Fry has tensed up beside her she knows he can sense it too.

The lead Peacekeeper is speaking as he pulls out a chair. He salutes.

"Mr President," he says. "Sir."

And Leela is face to face with the figure of President Nixon.

* * *

He's ghoulish. He's awful, and suddenly Leela knows what the chemical smell was. It's formaldehyde, preserving _him_ – because the head in a jar is gone.

He's found himself a body somewhere, and grafted himself onto it. Surface medicine is so good she can't even see the line of stitches at his neck – but she doesn't need to, because in every other way, it's clear this body isn't his. It's like it's fighting him. Or failing him. His every breath is a struggle, and his extremities are blue. His fingernails are turning slowly black, stuck on the end of clumsy swollen fingers, and there is a pale lavender tint to his lips. He's not getting enough oxygen. Either his lungs or his circulatory system won't obey the commands of his brain. Leela has seen some desperate surgery carried out on mutants after pipe explosions in the sewer, but she's never seen anything like this. That's his _head_ , on a _dead body_.

No wonder she thought of mutts. Nixon has turned _himself_ into a mutt, experimented on himself in some grisly attempt to prolong his artificial life. Or maybe just to flatter his vanity.

There have been rumors about the president, as far back as Leela can remember. No-one knows what he owes his life to, in reality. Some people say he was artificially frozen, like Fry, but it was done too long ago or he wasn't defrosted right, and his body didn't survive the process. Others say he's an experiment himself; the illegal clone of a dead Earth president. They say he has weekly electro-therapy treatments to stimulate his brain, they say he has injections of human growth hormone every day, they say . . .

 _They say, they say._

They never said this. Even the fevered imagination of the sewer never came up with _this_.

Behind her, Fry sounds like he's trying not to retch. Leela swallows hard herself, and keeps her breathing shallow to fend off the smell. Fry's hand is slippery in hers - he's sweaty and nervous - but she only grasps it harder. If she has a hold of Fry's hand, Leela thinks, she can control him a little, and they both might make it out of this alive.

In the flesh, Nixon's flubby lips look like a pair of dead fish. But then they sharpen suddenly and pull taut, and Leela sees that President Nixon smiles like a shark.

"Oho! My tributes," he rumbles.

He drags the r sound out the way he does in his speeches on TV - _ttrrrrriibutes_ \- and that awful smile widens. He's enjoying this. He's enjoying their fear.

The worst part is that Leela _is_ afraid. She can't help it. She was raised for this; raised with Nixon's voice booming down at her, and his face projected house-high on a screen, and with heavy boots kicking out at her in his name. She was raised to fear President Nixon. And it worked. There is a part of her that looks at him now and remembers she's genetic scum, she's less than dirt, she doesn't have the right to look him in the eye. She hates it, but it's there. It's what life in the sewer did to her. It made her feel small and powerless, and it taught her that the only way to survive was to make herself even smaller, to run away and hide so no-one notices her.

It's why she ran from the Cornucopia on the first day of the Games, despite all her plans. It's why she stayed hidden after that and just waited to die. She's a coward. She was lying to herself. She's pathetic, she's nothing, _no-one_ . . .

Fry pulls closer to her. He doesn't say anything - Leela doubts he even knows what she's thinking - but just the presence of him, the nearness of him, is enough to shake her out of it. _No_ , her brain whispers. _You're not a coward. You went back for Fry. You fought for him! You **never** let Nixon make you what he wanted. You left the sewer! You saved your mother! You signed up for the Games!_

Something in her cracks open again, the way it did in the Games, and suddenly Leela isn't filled with fear anymore. She's filled with hate.

Nixon is still talking.

"The peacenik who knows all about Halley's Comet," he says disparagingly. "And little miss mutant with the big ideas. You know how much trouble you caused me? Hrrmm?"

Fry shakes his head.

Leela can't move. It's her Nixon is looking at. It's her he's really talking to, she knows.

"You might have sucked in Charlie Chump here with your little lovesick act," he says, "but I see through you, missy. I know what you're really about, oh yes I do. _Trrrrouble_. I see it. I _know_. You didn't want to die for this slack-jawed junior hippy. You just wanted to stick it to me, didn't you? On national TV, where I'd have no comeback to your little games. You thought you could hit Tricky Dicky where he's weak! Thought you could stir up some of that old Watergate feeling, hey? Well I wasn't born yesterday!"

Fry is shaking his head more fervently now.

"No," he says. "No, that's not what happened, Mr President! Lord President! Emperor . . . President . . . Supreme of the . . . um . . ."

"Can it, peabrain! I'm talking to the brains of the operation."

Fry tails into silence, and Leela realizes it's all on her now. She has to do something.

"That's not what happened," she hears herself say.

The words sound hollow, even to her.

"Don't lie to me," Nixon growls.

Leela feels it again, that flare of fury blazing a straight line through the center of her chest.

"I'm not lying."

Nixon's arm lurches. It hits the table in one clumsy motion, the dead weight of his hand smacking against the wood. Fry reels back instinctively, tugging Leela back a half-step too, but she plants her boots and won't let him pull her any further. She holds her ground, staring into Nixon's cold black eyes.

She knows this game. She played it that first night in the Tribute Center, after all.

 _Show no fear. Hide your feelings. Make yourself a threat._

Time to play again.

"I'm not lying," she repeats, in a tone as cool as she make it.

She raises her chin and Nixon's face twists, his mouth contorting as if he's swallowed something sour.

"And I'm not buying it," he snarls. "Your little love story didn't fool me, missy. Don't you forget - I've seen the raw footage from those Games. Every unguarded moment. Every careless word. Every look on your face that didn't make that sappy final cut." Leela's expression freezes, and the president smiles an ugly smile. "You think about that," he says. "And then you tell me that little stunt with the darts wasn't your revenge."

Time seems to stop.

Fry has gone very still beside her. He won't like this, Leela knows - he hates the cold side of her, how ruthless she can be sometimes - but she can't let that stop her now. She's in survival mode.

She needs to play the game.

So she takes a steadying breath - in through her nose, slow, so it won't be as obvious - and prays he won't give her away.

"You're right," she tells Nixon. "I wasn't in love in the arena. I just saw my shot, and I took it. I was out of the running when I allied with Fry. I needed sponsors and I manipulated his feelings to get them." She affects a shrug. "I don't feel bad about it. For all I knew, he was faking it too."

Fry is barely breathing beside her, and this is cruel, this is twisting the knife in an old wound . . . but she has to keep him safe. She has to keep him alive.

Alive and hating her is better than lovestruck and dead.

"But once I started working the love angle," she goes on, "I had to see it through. I mean, it was obvious Fry wasn't going to make it. But if I left him to die, sponsors would have hated me. And it kept me interesting. I knew the Gamemakers would leave me alone if I gave them a soap opera. I just had to play it right. Wait it out. Cry on cue." She tosses her head back, arrogant. " _You have to make them love you._ Amy taught me that. I was her favorite, right from the start. Celgnar had the brawn, and Fry had the human factor, but I had the brains. I could lie. I could plan. I knew how to play the game." Another bolt of inspiration strikes her. "My little meltdown on Day One? We planned that together, so the Careers would underestimate me." She laughs, a horrible, twisted thing. "They regretted that."

Nixon is watching her intently.

"And the darts?" he demands.

 _I'm sorry, Fry,_ Leela thinks. _I'm so, so sorry._

She holds the president's gaze. Arrogant. Indifferent. If Amy ever taught her anything, let it have been this. Please, let it have been this.

"I was angry," she says. "Angry I needed to work out an exit strategy. I wasn't thinking about you at all. I was thinking about how to save my own skin." She hates herself, as she stretches her lips in a sardonic smile. "I knew Fry wouldn't be able to kill me. I was _bluffing,_ don't you see? If Doubledeal had waited a half a second longer, I'd have pushed my dart into Fry's heart. And he would have dropped his. I knew exactly how it would play out. It's not my fault your Head Gamemaker lost his nerve."

Nixon says nothing. Just watches her, like a snake lying in wait.

"You want a liar," Leela says, desperation tinting her words. "You want someone who knows how to play the game, who can play happy ever after on the Tour and fix Doubledeal's mistake. I can be that! Haven't I proved I can be that? Just let us live. We'll sell the romance, be your sideshow. Whatever you want, we can do it."

"And Lover Boy?"

Leela takes another breath. She hasn't looked at Fry since this began. She doesn't dare.

"He does what I say."

Nixon snorts out a laugh.

"Ohoho, you are a good liar. Very good, missy." Abruptly, his hand smacks against the table again. "VT!" he barks.

Leela jumps, but he's not talking to her. One of the Peacekeepers steps forward at his words, and sets a holovid projector down in front of them. He presses the button on its smooth black surface, and suddenly Leela is looking at a holographic projection of herself and Fry.

 _The Games_ , she thinks - but she's wearing a dress like crushed starlight, and there is no bandage on Fry's leg. The footage is grainy, brightened up from night vision, but Fry is leaning against a wall, as if he needs it to hold him up. Leela says something inaudible, and then his hand settles on her hip, just shy of her waist, and she falls into him. Her lips crash into his, hands fisting in his hair, and -

In the real world, Fry lets out a small sound of pain, and Leela realizes she has just crushed his hand in hers under the table.

This isn't the Games. It's that night outside the Splendor, when Amy doped Fry and he . . . and they . . .

Her face is on fire.

On the tape, Fry is mouthing at her neck, and the best actress in the world couldn't conjure up the expression on her face.

Leela shuts her eye, horrified.

Nixon's laugh starts as a low rumble, deep in his chest. It builds and builds, and then it bursts free, reverberating around the room until he runs out of breath and retreats into what sounds like a wheezy coughing fit. Tears stream down his blue-tinged cheeks. Spittle sticks to his chin.

" _Brr-ravo_ ," he says. "Brrrr-rraavo! Now, you listen to me, you one-eyed little freak. I don't care what you want. I don't care why you did it. But you know what I want on this Tour, and you're going to deliver. You're going to put on a show - love's young dream, loyal to the last. PG-rated. And if you don't" - his eyes narrow - "I'll snap your commie boyfriend's neck. And if _he_ falls out of line" - his gaze falls on Fry, and his lips curve in a cruel smile - "I'll snap yours." His voice lowers. "One. Wrong. Move."

Leela swallows. Her mouth is suddenly bone dry.

"I understand."

Nixon snorts. His cold stare is still fixed on Fry.

"And you?"

Fry opens his mouth. Closes it again.

At last, he nods.

Nixon smiles, satisfied.

"Good," he rumbles. "And if you ever feel like forgetting this deal of ours, pulling more of that Romeo and Juliet crap, remember this."

He leans forward, and that dead, chemical smell washes over Leela again. It's all she can do not to gag.

"I know where your mother lives. All alone, in this house I built. And I know about your whore of a mentor. I know where she goes at night, and where she gets her supply. Don't think I can't find her. Don't think I can't arrange a trragic overdose." His eyes flicker, dead and mad, a nightmare in the waking world. _"Don't think I won't."  
_


End file.
